The Escape Artist
by songsora
Summary: She'd follow her oldest friend to the ends of the earth if she had to. Little did she know that this time he would be leading her straight into the mouth of Hell...and there was no going back. Luz/OC. Rated M for language and explicit content. HIATUS.
1. Sobel Stands for Shithead

"Fucking Christ," George raked an impatient hand through miles and miles of thick brown hair. He bit his lip; an irate sigh escaped through gritted teeth. "Max, please tell me this is a dream. A really, really _wet_ one."

George Luz.

Joker extraordinaire.

And best friend of over fifteen years.

I could say that I had joined the paratroopers for glory. For honor. For the extra fifty bucks a month that my family could've used in a time like this. But those would all be lies and, truthfully, I was no liar. I had morals…even if I was committing fraud by claiming I had a penis hiding in my pants when, clearly, at least to myself, I was sorely lacking one.

No, it was George Luz that brought me to good old Georgia. To Camp Toccoa. Of course, it had been involuntary on his part. Perhaps it could be better explained as…motivation. He was my muse. My inspiration. The nagging thought that gnawed and tore and hacked away at any hope for a good night's sleep the day George announced to our small group of troublemakers that he was joining the paratroopers. I could kill him for it…for abandoning us to go get killed in some foreign country. But then again, it would be a sin, to have all the fun. I was sure that someone else would want to do it for me, and with the sort of relish that only men seemed capable of cultivating, before the first week was up.

"Was that a confession of love?"

He was clearly not amused. "Get your _ass _up."

I was dragged out the back of the supplies truck with bone-crushing force and nearly landed on my ass, but George made sure that didn't happen. No, he had a firm grip on the collar of my shirt. One that, if I hadn't made such a scene clawing at my throat and wheezing and being completely melodramatic, might have strangled me.

Luckily for me, his selective hearing had, for once, worked toward _my _advantage.

"What the hell are you doing here?" He hissed. "Are you trying to get me killed?"

"Never mind getting _me _killed," I retorted with an unladylike-like snort. "Just skip on over to guilt by association. That seems logical."

"It's legal for me to be here," George replied. "And I've got a penis to prove it and a whole lot of suffering coming my way for getting involved in this shit too."

"C'mon, Luz," I bit back a derisive current of laughter. "This is me you're talking to here…you don't gotta lie! When have you ever had respect for the law?"

"Since my dumbass friend of the female persuasion decided to stowaway in the back of a truck heading for boot camp," he said, then paused and sniffed me. "Wearing _perfume_. You know like twenty guys asked me if I had a nice little run through the flower garden before I left?"

"They thought it was you?"

"There were traces of it on me," he deadpanned. "They assumed."

"You know what assuming does."

"Makes me smell like a fucking girl?"

"Well, last time I heard it was 'makes an ass out of you and me', but I guess your version make sense too," I scrunched my nose, recalling his insult. "And hey, buddy. That's a low blow! Why would you say I smell like a whore? That doesn't seem fair."

I could feel his breath on my face. That was how close he was. My long-harbored, but never confessed attraction toward him began to flutter around the empty spaces of my stomach like butterflies. He still smelled good. Like old cigarettes mixed with the musky notes of cologne.

His grip on me tightened. Underneath the moon, his eyes looked half-wild, but it was just the way the light reflected off them. In the sun, they were dark and mild. Perhaps a little mischievous as George was, and would always be, an impish little boy at heart.

But this was serious George. Not the boy who put tacks on the teacher's chair or mocked the principal at recess. This was him on the brink of making a change. One that would affect him for the rest of his life. On the eve of his first day of boot camp, George Luz was a force to be reckoned with. All nerves and severity and there was no room for jokes. Not now.

"Maxine, I want you to go home," he said. "Where it's safe. War is no place for a girl. And what are you doing in the back of a truck? What if someone else had been ordered to come over here and do the drudge work, huh? What would you have done then?"

"Well, I didn't think that far ahead. Besides, it's no place for you either, George. I'm not going," I crossed my arms defiantly across my chest. "You can throw me over your shoulder like a sack of mushrooms but like any fungus…I'll just keep coming back."

A ghost of a smile. I saw it there in the corner of his mouth. "Not if I lop of your legs you won't."

"That would fall under the category of 'not safe'," I rebutted pointedly. "How will I get back home with no legs? Not to mention how will I get around?"

"I'll throw you in the back of a taxi. Let you bleed a little."

"That sounds like a perfectly foolproof plan."

"I mean it," he said, transitioning back into serious George. "You're going home. Tonight."

"Back to what? Moping around, wishing you were here, working tables at the local grease pub?" I scoffed, digging my feet a little deeper into the Toccoa sand. "There is no way in this hell or the next that I am going back to that filthy excuse for a burger joint."

"Get this through your fat fucking head, Max." His voice raised, his eyes flashed. "_You are going home_."

He might have been taller, more muscular and had a deeper voice, which made him all the more intimidating and fucking _alluring _in my eyes, but that didn't mean shit. I'd dealt with his masculinity for as long as I could remember, back in a time when our voices matched. When all George seemed to wear was a patched up grin and scabby knees. And even as it began to expand and George changed, for the better and for the worst all at the same time (this made it so confusing and my hormones were simply not ready for it), I still got used to it. Acclimation is the soul of survival. This was especially true when dealing with the likes of good old George Luz.

"I'm afraid not," I replied calmly. Collectedly. It was a woman's job to be the calm in the middle of the storm of a man's out of control temper tantrums. "You see, I am now enlisted as Maximilian Austen in the highly esteemed 101st Airborne Division. Congratulations to me, huh?"

He stared at me. Incredulous. I had half a mind to ask him if he meant to catch flies that way but knowing the precarious situation I was in, risking his wrath didn't seem like the best idea I'd had. Then again, this one probably wasn't considered a stroke of genius either.

For a moment, there was only silence. The moon filtered through a thin layer of clouds that had begun to form in front of a black veil sky stitched with stars. All around us, the camp was still. There were bouts of laughter that swelled up out of the barracks here and then, but mostly it was as quiet as a graveyard. Perhaps less welcoming than one as well.

At last, he breathed. I hadn't noticed, but neither of us had taken a breath for a long time. It was no wonder that my lungs were burning as I heaved an impatient sigh.

George ran a nervous hand through his hair again. It protested and bristled for a moment before falling back into what looked like a deliberate mess. "All right, but if you die it's not my fault. You don't have permission to come back and haunt me for the rest of my life because _you _were the one that decided to follow me out here," he said. "God knows why anyone would want to put themselves through boot camp."

"I could ask the same of you, but I would bet on not getting a serious answer."

"You're probably right." He said.

"So you're not going to tell me?"

"Who says I didn't?"

"I never got a straight answer."

"That's because you never asked a straight question."

"Okay George Luz, you want a straight question? Well here it is. Don't miss it cause it's heading your way," I said. "Why did you join the paratroopers?"

He cast a disapproving look at my hair. "We've got some work to do before we hit the sack."

For a moment, I was struck dumb and I forgot all about my question. The word _sack _got my attention faster than if he would have pulled down his pants right in front of me without warning. Damn the hormones…I still wasn't free of adolescence; it was like plague. You never really got rid of it.

His tactic had worked. I was completely uninterested in his rationality at the moment. All I could think of was us. Together. Naked. In a bed.

God it was a beautiful sight.

Still, despite the unlikelihood of such a situation coming to fruition, I was hopeful as I stared after him. He was walking away; this didn't look good for a fantasy struggling to come true.

I scuttled after him. "Hit the sack…together?"

* * *

The next morning, we were roused before dawn.

It wasn't the most pleasant wake up call I'd ever had. If I wanted to be honest, it was the worst fucking way to wake up after only four hours of sleep in my life. But I wasn't quite sure if our new Captain was even _human _yet. I had to make sure. The last thing I wanted was to learn he could read minds the _hard _way after fantasizing about all the beautifully gruesome ways I could kill the son of a bitch with a rusty bayonet.

It was about four in the morning when he came through the door. We had all been snug as bugs in rugs in our cots, a euphemism used to describe the piece of shit pile of springs we were given as beds. Complete with scratchy wool sheets and a paper-thin excuse for a mattress. Sleeping on it was like sleeping on a bed of nails, but after a long day of scheming and grueling travel, I was ready for a bed of hot coals if that was all there was available. At least I'd be warm.

For the last minute of the sleep we scrounged up from a night of tossing and turning, most of us dreamed pleasantly.

Then the nightmare on legs walked in.

Banging a wooden spoon against a pan.

While blowing a whistle.

I could've killed the bastard and been praised for it by my peers. Probably given a medal of fucking honor for it too.

Next to me, George groaned, but leapt out bed faster than a jackrabbit. I was a little slower, much to George's utter dismay, and was promptly yanked out of the twisted sheets before our C.O. walked by and witnessed my sluggishness.

I yawned as the man addressed us.

"Attention!"

We all snapped into stick-straight postures and hoped to sweet Jesus above that we could stay on our feet long enough to hear the entire welcoming speech.

"So, _this_ is the future of combat," The man scrutinized us as he walked along the rows of empty cots. He didn't look impressed. Not in the least bit. "This is the group of misfits, hot-heads and runts I've been stuck with this summer to train and pass off as able-bodied soldiers."

He paused in the middle of his lecture at the first sign of impermissible stirring. "Did I say you could move, private?"

"No, sir!"

The C.O.'s heavy stomping could have probably been heard in China. The poor souls probably thought it was an earthquake. Alas, it was only an asshole superior asserting his undeniable authority in Toccoa. "Are you deaf, Private? I said _no moving_!"

The private kept quiet. Apparently he knew better than to dance with the Devil. The C.O. began moving through the cots again. I struggled to stay completely motionless and, more importantly, _awake _as the seconds wore on into torturous minutes. Across from me, George was as still as a statue.

"My name is Captain Sobel. When spoken to, you will answer, without fail, to me as sir. You are to address me as Captain. We are not buddies from college, we are not even friends. One slip up and I will make you wish you were never born. Got it?"

"Yes sir!" Was the chorused reply.

"Good," he said, looking us over one more time. His gaze flickered to me and he appraised my lack of stature.

"Private."

I knew he was talking to me. I was just…wishing I was invisible and he was speaking to the wall behind my cot. Or the cot itself. Whichever one he preferred. I swallowed hard and attempted to meet the eyes of my superior. Show him I wasn't soft.

I had to incline my head. It felt like I was looking up at a towering skyscraper or the summit of a very steep mountain. Captain Sobel's eyes danced in a sort of amused spark of light. He found it funny that I had to tilt my head upwards to look at him. Apparently he was a jackass.

"Did I say you could kneel, Private?" Sobel inquired.

It was funny. For a moment, I could swear on my mother's life that he actually sounded _serious_.

I didn't move a muscle. Didn't betray the thoughts that slithered through my head like a rogue snicker. "Kneel, sir?"

"Answer the question, Private."

I straightened up a little more. "I am not kneeling, sir."

"So you really are…that short." He clarified.

"Yes, sir."

A laugh escaped the tyrant's composure and he walked on. My innermost desire to torture the man to death was intensified tenfold. A few of the other men found it hilarious as well; a few chuckles reached my ears and my cheeks burned with a ferocious blush.

"Today's schedule is as follows," Sobel continued as the laughter died away. "Your first lecture begins at 0700 hours. Before lecture, there will be breakfast in the mess hall which promptly begins at 0500 hours. And between these two miserable hours, we will begin physical training. It will be grueling. It _will _be painful. But you will do it or you will not get your wings. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir!" Another unanimous reply.

"Change into your P.T. gear. Since it's your first day, I'll give you five minutes," Sobel turned and walked hastily toward the entrance. It was still dark outside.

Before he left the building completely, however, he turned and with a wicked grin, said, "There is someone who I'd like you all to meet. You'll be well acquainted by the end of your training, I think."

* * *

We had been through a month of boot camp and already we had survived multiple encounters with Sobel's undisputed insanity. Thirty days of torture; only eighty two to go.

The spaghetti incident, for example, was much talked about. It was a favorite topic amongst those who hated Sobel, which was mostly everyone who wasn't completely devoid of pride, as a companion to the discussions of 'infractions', otherwise known as minuscule details that only the Devil himself would know to look for. We all agreed that Sobel (now the official Lieutenant Asswipe) was not human. He was most certainly Lucifer incarnate. If only we could prove it.

A week prior, we had been promised not only a light lecture afternoon, but also a substantial lunch. After nearly a month of being pushed to the brink of starvation on nothing but army slop, we were all thrilled to hear about the change in the menu. None of us had stopped to think of Sobel's diabolical plan to sit us down, let us stuff ourselves until we were nearly bursting with noodles and 'army ketchup' (so said Perconte, but I wasn't Italian...noodles and red sauce meant spaghetti to me), and then proceed to change the plan at the last second and make us run Currahee. I wasn't the only one that lay awake that night completely drenched in sweat from intense stomach pain.

This particular day found us in lecture. It was a Friday, a few hours before our weekend passes would be handed out, and everyone had been on their best behavior this week so we could have _one _two day period without Sobel breathing down our necks or having latrines to scrub. A group of us already planned on going to the local pub, where the guys would drink beer, be rowdy and maybe find some attractive company to soothe their sore eyes. After weeks of looking at Sobel's ugly mug with absolutely no female reprieve, I couldn't blame the poor fellas. I'd be going completely batshit crazy too if I wasn't already loony from exhaustion.

George and I, on the other hand, would be playing darts and ordering hard liquor. Back home, we'd played darts frequently. I always lost, of course, on the grounds that I was a girl and _all _girls had a poor arm when it came to sports. Of course this was George's chauvinistic point of view. I found no flaw in my aim; just badly manufactured darts and that was _not _my fault at all.

It was a relatively light afternoon. Sobel had been called away to meet with Colonel Sink on an urgent business matter and Easy Company was given a breather. The moment we all heard the announcement, a widespread sigh of relief filled the barracks. I had immediately smelled coffee and stale cigarettes laced with peppermint. And it got unbearably stuffy with so much body heat and hot breath being emanated all at once.

George ruffled my short hair. God, I was so glad to just be able to _sit _and not run up fucking Currahee. After the war, when I got home, all I wanted to do was blow up that mountain and watch it burn and crumble beneath me. That would be a dream come true. The only thing that would make it better would be knowing Sobel had been running it as an early morning exercise and I had happened to catch him off guard.

Daydreams were so sweet sometimes.

So sweet that, the moment I started thinking about the far-fetched image of Sobel and Currahee going up in flames, I missed the last ten minutes of lecture. George delivered a crushing blow to the ribs and my pen was projected off my lap like a bullet.

"You fucking _twat."_

"Now, now," George teased, watching with a barely contained smile as I attempted, in vain, to rub the ache out of my skin. In an impression of my father, whose distinctive voice was often hard to imitate, he added, "that there is called swearing. And it is not considered polite young – whoa man!"

I snarled and gave him a violent shove as he threatened to expose me in front of at least fifty men. "Fuck polite; I'm in _pain."_

"Who's in pain?" Doc Roe's deep Louisiana accent rose up out of the crowd of scattered murmurs. I looked over at the dark-haired, dark-eyed Cajun and motioned toward George with my free hand.

"Oh, it's nothin' serious Gene," I replied. "Just being cruelly brutalized by a comrade in arms."

Roe's sixth sense calmed as he caught the note of levity in my voice and he gave a distant nod of understanding. As quickly as he had come into the conversation, he bowed out. I watched him merge into the crowd of Easy men; the boy seemed to have no sense of humor, at least from what I observed.

Looking to George in confusion, I gestured to the silent, aloof medic. "Does that boy ever say more than two words put together?"

"He doesn't like to get close to nobody," George answered with a shrug of nonchalance. It wasn't considered masculine to _care _about anything. "It's a typical medic rule, or so goes the lecture in medic duties brought to you by Ralph Spina…so, how about those passes? I'm dying for a cold beer."

"You're always dying when it comes to alcohol."

"Well, save me or have me committed," George replied.

"You'll have to be saved tomorrow. We've got a twelve mile march tonight."

"Do you always have to rain on my parade?" His entire expression lit up, suddenly, like a moth caught in a flame. It was a beautiful sight to behold; his eyes turned to liquid amber and my insides proceeded to melt like ice pops on a hot day. "'Ey! 'Ey Liebgott. Going my way?"

Joe Liebgott's pale, handsome face crept into view. An arrogant smirk was perched on the corners of his mouth like the smooth, polished feathers of a narcissistic bird. A Jewish bird, no less. "If your way is going to get a fucking pass to get out of this shithole tomorrow night."

"A beer on me then?"

"You bet your ass."

"Great, as long as I get to keep it."

"The beer or the ass?" I asked.

"Nobody I know wants your scrawny ass, Luz," Guarnere quipped from behind us.

"As opposed to your very large one then? I suppose that's in high demand."

"Shaddup."

"I don't know how you manage to keep all that extra fat on when we are worked to the bone on a daily basis," George continued, almost philosophically. If it weren't for the sarcastic lilt he put on the end of his words, I would've believed he was actually serious. For a second or two. "Sobel practically runs us to death."

"It's called good genes. You can thank my mother for this fine view," Guarnere drawled with a sardonic grin, lifting a cigarette out of his breast pocket.

In a matter of one month, we'd all become addicted to nicotine. It was like clockwork – join the army, gain a bad habit to go along with it. Cursing and smoking seemed the obvious choices that would make mothers all over the world sob in horror and dismay and, therefore, were the most popular.

"Hey, help out a charity case here?" I asked. Guarnere handed me one of the snow-white sticks and tossed me the lighter.

George took one too. He inspected it for a moment before pressing it against is lips. "Basketcase is more like it."

I held up the lighter to the end of my smoke. "Suck my dick, George."

"If you had one."

Guarnere's frame shook with deep, hearty laughter. It was a blessing that he had found it so comical as I had just begun to turn the palest shade of white the world had ever seen. I looked almost ghostly, walking there beside my best friend. "Ah fuck!" He wheezed, packing away his remaining nicotine. "God, Luz. You _kill_ me."

"That's what I'm here for," He raised his hands, as if to look innocent. The impish grin on his face gave him away. "To kill."

I rolled my eyes as I tore open the door to our barrack and prepared myself for a long three hours of overdue fatigue duty.

* * *

We had only two hours before the passes we were given the day before were valid.

George whistled as he scrubbed his boots with a toothbrush. If I didn't know any better, I'd think it was Perconte's; the boy was always brushing his teeth. It really was a miracle that they hadn't fallen out already from overstimulation. But I'd made sure that he took it out of his own kit and not Frank's, which was in dangerous proximity of George's wayward hands.

"Ready for a good ball busting tonight George?"

"I'm always ready for a good ball busting," he replied, holding up his spit-shined boot in the light. He appraised it with one eye, then decided it wasn't clean enough and set to work once again. "However, I always like to be prepared so I don't look like an ass while I receive it. What is it that is busting my balls again?"

"Me. You. And the darts that I'm going to whip your ass at tonight."

"I think you have an ass whipping on _your _calendar, my good friend," he rebutted. "You are completely confusing my ineptitude with yours."

"No, I've got it right," I explained, throwing one clean boot on my pillow. One down, one to go. "You're going down in flames, George my boy."

"And you, Max, are deluded."

I looked over my shoulder for a prospective victim. One, an honest and rather blunt fellow, immediately caught my eye. "Malarkey!"

He didn't even look up from his work. "Yeah?"

"Who do you think would win at darts," I asked. "Me or Luz here."

"Is that even a fair question?" Malarkey snorted. "You throw like a girl."

George fell apart in a fit of giggles that almost sent me back a few years in the past. The image of a little boy with too much hair and knobby, scarred up knees came to mind.

I scowled and inwardly cursed Malarkey's underwear to disintegrate on a run up Currahee. "Kindly shut the fuck up would you George?"

"Even Malarkey knows you're shit at darts!" George wheezed. Fed up, I chucked my toothbrush at him and it pegged him square in the temple. At least the laughter stopped; it came flying back at me, however, and I took a blow to the lip.

"You two have some growing up to do," Malarkey shook his head. "What's the matter, huh? Sobel's endless torture making you regress back to childhood or something?"

"Speak for yourself Donald." I retorted. George and I shared a peel of snickers.

Ten minutes picked up the pace and time flew by quickly as we worked in silence. Before long, my boots were shined to perfection, so flawlessly, in fact, that I could spot a pimple on my ass in their reflection. I reached deep into the pocket of my fatigues and felt the sharp paper edges of the signed, dated and completely authorized pass against my fingertips. Hi ho silver indeed.

"George, you ready?"

He yawned and stretched, stiff from hours of sitting in one unchanging attitude. His boots lay before him on his cot, shined and ready for inspection. He'd been working on cleaning his gun, making sure that the dust on the sight aperture that had gotten his pass revoked last time had not returned.

"I was ready twenty minutes ago. But apparently you weren't."

"Stop complaining. At least we're getting out of here."

"You guys leaving already? Thought you were gonna wait for me." Liebgott's voice carried over from the other side of the room. Malarkey, Guarnere and Toye looked up from their toils as well.

"I never said that," I answered, looking to George. "Did you ever say that?"

"Nope."

"Asswipes," Liebgott's mouth turned upward, forming into a cheeky grin. "You're waiting for me."

"Is that an order, sir?" George quipped.

Another pair of footsteps echoed across the nearly empty quarters. Sergeant Lipton appeared in the doorway. He looked relaxed for once. "Who's going down to the local tavern for a beer?"

"And a round of craps Sarge?" I added.

"That goes without saying," Lipton replied.

"All right, people, let's move our asses," George announced to the room. "The night is young and so are we so let's not wait until we all get old here! Everyone who gets out of this room in the next five seconds gets a free beer on me."

Every man who had been present to hear such an offer, one they could never refuse, was suddenly propelled off their cots. The sound of animals fighting for the doorway ensued as George and I got up and followed them outside at a leisurely pace. I gave him a punch in the shoulder and he swayed to the side a little.

"God, I'm just so good at motivation aren't I?" He sighed happily, yanking me under his arm. Even at five foot eight, George towered over me, and so I was buried in his armpit. Luckily he had showered that afternoon and didn't smell like a sweaty old sock. "Maybe I should be a drill sergeant. I'd love to give old Sobel a nice kick in the teeth."

I was too busy admiring the smell of George's bath soap to really care what he was saying.

But I agreed with him anyway. I mostly always did.

* * *

A/N: FIRST AND FOREMOST - This is based on the mini-series not the real George Luz. So, of course, artistic license has and will be taken during the course of this story. Sorry it's so long, but I wanted to establish everyone's character. Well, at least some of everyone. More 'brothers' will appear in the next chapter. And if you wanna know what Maxine looks like, I'll have a picture up on my profile page. Hopefully I find one and it shows up before you read this. Haha. If not! Then there's always checking back later. Please let me know what you think! If I got anything wrong, if I got someone's character wrong or if there's something I should change grammar-wise...don't be afraid to let me know! I don't bite...at least not that hard. ;) And hopefully my OC doesn't come across as a Mary Sue. She's got a lot of growing up to do before this story is over. Right now, she is an eighteen-year-old wise-ass who knows nothing outside of high school, George Luz and hormones. A sad sheltered life that will soon come crashing down all around her. :]

So, reviews are like chocolate! Everyone loves them and those who don't are weeird. And for those of you who didn't catch that, that was what I liked to call a bad joke. ;)  
But seriously. Reviews are appreciated and will be rewarded with special cookies. I won't tell you what's in them, but you'll get one anyway. :P

Disclaimer - If I owned Rick Gomez's George Luz, he'd be my sex slave. Band of Brothers belongs to Ambrose, Spielberg and Hanks. 3


	2. Camp Mackall

"So how's this going to work, George?" I whispered, craning my neck to see over his rather attractively bulky shoulder. "You going to play lookout while I scrub down?"

"Or I can play hide and go seek the girl parts while you scrub down." He offered.

I, in turn, offered a smack upside the back of his head. He didn't seem too interested in the idea after that.

"All right, coast should be clear," he announced, still rubbing the sore spot on his scalp. It was a wonder indeed that he could reach skin through all that hair. All that hair…God, wouldn't it feel so good to run my fingers through it while he's naked and sweating and I'm underneath him and oh, that does feel nice…

He turned to face me, big doe eyes fixed on mine. "You ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be." I replied.

It was dark, thankfully, as we traipsed the empty grounds of the seemingly deserted camp. But just like the night we arrived in Toccoa, appearances were deceiving. On the outside it might have been just another lonely base, where people came to get their asses whipped into the right shape to fit into the ever-evolving machine of war, but beneath the skin there was a lot more life than could be found by just one over the shoulder glance.

In our quarters, Liebgott, Muck and Martin were playing craps on a cot while Guarnere muttered to himself and cracked his knuckles. Malarkey would be lying on his back, counting the minutes before the lights went out and then there was Sergeant Lipton, the company mother. He'd fuss over the lonely ones, the ones that kept to themselves, mostly poor Gene who was just fine and dandy with his own thoughts that turned inward like a reflection in the mirror.

Ever the southern gentleman, Gene would be polite in answering the Sergeant. Perhaps it was also because he'd get an ass whipping if he wasn't polite. I never pictured the sad-eyed medic as a violent type anyway.

Liebgott, however, needed a few beatings to keep his hot, fat head in its place. Sometimes it just grew too big for its britches and took over the entire barrack. Sergeant Lipton would get up, switch his commonplace soft everyday gaze for the reprimanding glare and Liebgott would sink back into bed like a whipped puppy. His fists would constrict one last time, the remaining surges of fury filtering out of his system, and he'd clear his throat. All contrite and the like.

God, it was just too funny. The dynamics of the Easy boys.

I closed in on George as he stopped in front of the shower barrack. He waved his hand in front of his face and looked back at me with the most disparaging expression on his face. "Fuck me, would you go wash yourself already? You smell like the rotting carcass of a dog that's been eaten, digested, regurgitated, eaten again and then shat out and left to decompose in a gutter."

Sure, George. I'd love to fuck. But when you put it that way, it just kills the mood completely.

"That's what happens when you don't shower for two weeks straight. Learn from my example, my old friend…shower regularly. Restrict yourself to two packs a day. Oh and...stay in school."

"Too late for that one," he chuckled.

I gave him a pat on the shoulder and then snuck quietly into the little slipshod shack that served as our showering sector. Inside, there were wooden stalls, pitted from routine use by slap-happy knuckles and unruly boys that just didn't know how to go about their daily business without breaking a few teeth first.

This was the way it usually went for me. If I wanted to shower, I had to have a guard posted outside just in case the enemy caught even the slightest trace of female scent on the air and came sniffing around like a pack of hungry dogs. That would just not do.

It had to be George. No one else knew my secret and I planned on keeping it this way for a very long time. Until I died, hopefully. Or the end of the war. Either one would suffice, really, as long as they didn't distinguish any differences in my anatomy from their own.

And if they ever found out…I would shoot their nuts off.

"How's it going in there?" George called from outside. His voice was muffled by thick slabs of concrete and cracked tile. But George had this special ability…if he wanted to be heard, then by God he was going to be fucking _heard_. And with style. Usually it was a sarcastic remark or a joke that reached our ears, but sometimes, in a blue moon, there was something of a serious nature lurking around beneath that dense, brown thicket of hair.

It wasn't often though. We came to expect something snotty every time he opened his mouth.

Of course, I'd mastered this ability years ago. The boys had just now learned of it.

"Well, there's water, there's a bar of soap and when the water and soap become one, I shall proceed to clean myself," I replied, rolling my eyes as I turned on the shower head. The change of clothes, bar of soap and fresh chest-wrap I'd brought with me tumbled out of my arms into the sink closest to me and I looked around one last time to make sure I was completely alone. Finding that I was, indeed, solitary in the shower barrack, I stripped down until I was completely naked and flung my clothes in a nearby corner, where I'd be able to find them afterward.

I fished the bar of soap I'd brought with me out of the pile of clean clothes and bandages and kept it locked in a tight grip (a slippery bar of soap was a fucking bear to catch once it escaped your hands). Checking the temperature of the water first, I then stepped underneath the cool, steady stream and had to hold back the deepest, most beautiful sigh of relief. It was a shame, really, to waste such a sound on something so common as taking a shower. On the thought of being _washed, _actually _sanitary _for once_, _after I got dressed and walked back to the barracks with my sentinel standing outside the door, probably checking every last pocket his clothing provided for a spare smoke and, if he was lucky, perhaps a lighter.

But I didn't want George getting the wrong idea and come in, either worried I'd slipped and fell right on my ass or aroused or an odd combination of both. I kept the euphoria to myself for the time being.

Plus I wanted him to be equally, and _beautifully_, naked, as I knew him to be underneath all those bothersome clothes, when he saw me bare-bottomed for the first time.

"Are they having sex or cleaning you up?" He quipped. "Cause from here I can't tell. It sounds a little raunchy."

"That's because everything sounds raunchy to you, George," I replied, running the soap over my arms. I swore that I saw the topsoil of an entire country going down the drain as I scrubbed two weeks' worth of grime off my skin. "I could say something about Sunday school and you'd _still _find something sexual about it _somewhere_. Even if you have to dig it up out some dusty old grave from a conversation three years back."

For a few minutes, I bathed in beautiful, watery silence. That last retort must've made him smile and agree to armistice or frown and think up something equally ego-deflating to say in return. Meanwhile, I enjoyed the lack of conversation. It was something George and I could endure in each other's presence. Not having anything to say and not really giving a fuck otherwise if there was any discussion between us at all. It had taken years of growing used to one another, of finding out each other's mannerisms and decoding cryptic body language, but we found a rhythm that we liked best and stuck to it. It was off-kilter and, to the rest of the world, terribly crass, but we were too used to it by now to change the coarse, brusque cadence.

"You done yet?"

"Rush me and I'll have to come out there and kick your ass."

"And risk being discovered?" He snorted. The crude sound ricocheted off the tile walls with a metallic sort of thud. "Like you'd endanger your secret just to do what you've been doing since you were four years old."

"That's right." I cracked a smile as I massaged the lather into my scalp. "And I can still kick it as expertly now as I did then."

"Oh, right," he replied sarcastically. I could almost see the movements he made as he depicted this lapse in recollection. "Those mud wrestling contests when we were in grade school…you won _all_ of those."

"Very good, Luz. I guess your memory's not so shoddy after all."

"Actually, the correct phrase is _that's bullshit_ because I beat your scrawny ass into the dirt on multiple occasions."

"George?" I called to him.

A pause. He was thinking this over. Either a threat or something like adoration was about to come his way full speed ahead. "Yeah?" He finally replied.

"Shut up and take it like a man."

"You first."

"Ladies first, actually," I retorted.

"Then you should already be lined up."

"Do you find it fucking entertaining to risk exposing me?" I snapped. "It's bad enough that Gene's starting to look at me like I'm some kind of three-headed monster, but now I have to listen to you shoot off hints like a fucking ballistic pistol."

There was a sliver of a laugh in his voice as it reached me. "I do find fucking entertaining."

"That's not what I asked."

"I took it out of context," he explained. "All I heard was fuck and entertain and after that my brain just completely shut off."

I rolled my eyes and shut off the water. Part of me mourned the loss of the comfort, but the other half was screaming for a little shut eye. Then there was the other fraction…the one that wanted to both beat George's big, infuriating head against a brick wall and then proceed to fuck him senseless against said partition. It was so confusing sometimes, being attracted to a member of the pig-headed race known simply as _males._

"You men are all the same." I mused forlornly as I pulled a fresh pair of fatigue trousers over my damp legs.

"Then you should thank me for setting a good example for you."

"George?"

"Hmm?"

"Can you help me out here? I need an extra pair of hands to get this fucking breast-crusher into place."

"I can't promise that I'll be on my best behavior, but I sure can try."

Oh, how I wanted him to be on his worst behavior. But that should be saved for another time and I hoped to high heaven that he would keep his hands to himself for now. Or at least conduct them in a mannerly fashion. Neither seemed possible when it came to George Luz; I only hoped that I could keep my own unruly hormones in tact if he happened to let a hand slip in the wrong direction.

_God, if you want me to remain a virgin, you will help me out a little here._

He came inside and his eyes widened a little bit as he calculated my state of undress. Luckily he could only see my unclothed back. "Holy mother of God you're naked as a jaybird."

"I did warn you. I guess you weren't listening."

"And for once, for not listening, I have been rewarded. I'm a happy, happy boy." He grinned wickedly. The elfin creature from our golden days was beginning to peek out from beneath his adult guise. I wasn't fooled by the front; he would always be a little kid wrapped in the image of a grown man.

"You'll be a happy, happy boy with no hands if you don't behave yourself."

"I do like it when you threaten me with punishment, Max," he purred.

His eyebrows danced as he neared me and I couldn't take it. I looked away, busying my attention with something less…arousing. Ah, my breast-holder wrap. That seemed relevant to our situation. If it weren't for the fucking breasts, I wouldn't be here in this stupid situation. Well, neither situation really…being attracted to your male best friend was less likely when you were of the same gender.

Heat still pooled in the bottom of my stomach. Fucking tease. One of these days, if he didn't cut that shit out, he was going to find himself smashed up against a wall with lips and teeth and tongue attached to his neck. Then he would be sorry he ever provoked the little black lust monster.

"So, how do I do this?" He held up the wrap that I handed over to him and examined it as if it were a conundrum. Or a corset. Both were complicated and much too hard to understand while looking through the male eye. "Do I just slap it on or is there more to it than that?"

"Just wrap it around my chest and hook it in the back or something. It's not fucking rocket science."

"Well god damn if it isn't Aunt Flo coming up for a visit," he drawled in his infamous Major Horton impression. It dredged up quite the laugh in response. "You on the rag or something Max?"

"It's just so infuriating," I replied, lifting one arm as he wrapped it around my upper torso. "You men are so good at tearing things off that you forget the mechanics of putting things back on."

"Feeling philosophical today are we?"

"A little."

Silence swept over us as he concentrated on making the bindings comfortable enough to breathe in, but not in danger of becoming loose on one of our Currahee runs. It would be quite the scandal if I was being shouted at by the Lieutenant and during the spit-shower laced with accusations of inadequacy my female parts happened to pop out to say good morning and kindly ask the loud mouth to please shut the fuck up…

Let's just say it would go over much quicker than a fart in church.

"There," he said at last, breaking the quiet that had settled over us like a protective wing. He patted my side and appraised his good work. "Comfortable my pet?"

"Snug as a bug in a rug."

"Fan-fucking-tastic," he announced. He threw up his hands in victory. "I'm a genius. Beethoven is nothing but a dim light bulb compared to my brilliance. Monuments should be erected in my honor."

"I can find at least three things about that sentence that was completely and utterly disgusting."

"Of course you can," George teased. "It's because your mind is as dirty as a cesspool."

"Because of you," I made it a priority to point this out. As it was completely and utterly his fault that my mind was nothing more than a gutter and the current of his dirty thoughts ran through it on daily basis. Not to mention the influence of the other guys…Liebgott especially had a filthy way of thinking. It was no secret that I would be his favorite person if I ever was discovered. Simply for having breasts. And that would be all.

"That's right," he admitted proudly. "Because of me."

* * *

"Who's fucking playing and who's not?" Liebgott's obnoxiously loud voice emerged victorious over the background noise of exchange that passed between the lot of us. I'd been watching Roe silently for the past ten minutes. The poor boy looked as if someone had just shot his best friend.

Then again he always looked that way.

Martin stuck a finger in his ear and shook it, as if to wiggle the pain out of it. "Fuck. Don't you got a mute button or something?"

"God damn, Joe, who shit in your coffee this morning?" Malarkey asked.

"Don't give him-" I gestured to George. "Any bright ideas."

"What the fuck did I say?" George lifted his hands in feigned innocence, but I could see the gears of his mind turning as it processed the idea.

"Deal me in, Lieb," I said. "And Gene too."

"What?" The medic perked up instantly. Realization caught like a snag in an old sweater in his stony blue-gray eyes.

I perched on the edge of his cot, where he had been sitting, cross-legged and characteristically brooding as he stirred the melting pot of his thoughts. "You're playin' poker with us."

"Naw," he drawled. Something like a shy smile lit up his gloomy face like a pale paper lantern. "I'm…I'm not all that into cards. Don't reckon I remember how to play, really."

"Don't be a pussy, Gene." Lieb barked from across the way. Already, Malarkey, Lipton, Toye, Guarnere, Skip, Martin and George were gathering around him like flies on shit. Judging by the smears of sweat-tinged dirt on his face and the greasy state of his mussed-up hair, I could only guess he smelled like it too.

"Yeah, come on," Martin joined in with a roguish grin. "We won't bite unless you want us to."

"Even then we might protest." George quipped. The men broke out into shared, sociable chuckles.

"Well fuck me on a stick," I proclaimed to the room. Gene looked at me in that muted little way; he was so accustomed to profanity being thrown around like a soiled rag that it didn't disturb him anymore, not in the least. Besides, from the rumors I'd heard being tossed casually around the mess hall, the man could curse up quite the storm himself if caught in the right, or rather _wrong, _mood. "This just ain't going to fly," I said, offering him a gentle, playful nudge, the same kind I gave George on a daily basis. "If you're bunking with us, sharing our stink with us and having to listen to George snore all night, then you're one of us. There ain't nothing else to it."

"That sounds uncomfortable to me," Guarnere mentioned passively in his usual Philadelphia twang as he sifted through his hand. "The fucking on a stick part. I'm used to waking up to the smell of your un-wiped asses in the morning."

A swell of giggles broke out amongst the lot of them. Even hot-headed Liebgott cracked a devilish little smile in honor of Guarnere's distracted train of thought.

"Don't you guys ever think of anything besides sex?" Lipton inquired. There was hope in his voice, hope for his own race, but it was hollow optimism at best. Even he knew that all men thought about was fucking. They were sex organs with legs. Even he thought about it.

"What else is there in life?" Muck asked. The funny thing about it was…he had asked in earnest.

"I snore?" George received the news a little belatedly and said this more to himself than to the group, but it was processed with much astonishment. This was all news to him. "Fuck, since when?"

I shrugged half-heartedly, still lounging on Gene's orderly cot, mirroring his posture as I tried to convince him to join us. "I don't know, women seem to get along just fine without it. Sex, I mean, not George's snoring. I could live without that."

"How would you know anything about women, pipsqueak?" Liebgott narrowed his eyes at me.

"More than you'd think, hot-head," I replied. "Had a lot of friends of the female race back home."

Gene looked at me sideways, as if through a prism, and I threw off a lot of colors as he witnessed their crystalline birth, but none that he could shape into familiar names. Something about the way his eyes dug into my exposed corners unnerved me, but everyone knew he meant no harm. Just the opposite, really. His hands evoked calm when there seemed nothing but chaos. When he was conceived, some said he had been fashioned out of the same material angels were made of and that was where he derived all this healing power.

Or he just knew how to bend words.

Hearsay was all a bunch of shit anyway.

Liebgott was growing very annoyed with waiting. A dangerous thing, the Jew and impatience sitting under one roof. "Are we going to fucking play or just sit around with our fingers up our asses?"

"I opt for the second choice," Malarkey remarked calmly. "This toilet paper we've got sucks. My ass has not stopped itching since I took that big nasty shit yesterday."

"I could have gone my whole life without knowing that, Malark," George replied. He put a hand on the man's shoulder, a gentle smile on his lips, but I knew it was made for mockery. "Thank you."

Even Lipton had to laugh at that one. Gene cracked a peculiar little smile too.

"So, Doc," I returned to my mission at hand; I would conquer. I would emerge the champion in this game of evasion that he liked to play. "Poker? Come on. I'll show you how. You can cheat off me."

He shrugged a little, almost as if he were digging up some excuse, any one of them really, to refuse. But, after a moment, he looked like he was breaking down. He was going to give in. I reigned triumphant.

Until -

"Roe," came a voice from the doorway. We all looked up at the same time to see who it was who had horned in on my unmistakable accomplishment. "We've gotta do supply room check. Come on."

It was Spina. Fuck all. Fuck all. Fuck it _all. _I had been so close and that damned medic came and ruined all my prospects. Gene looked rather relieved as he unfolded his agile legs from underneath him and hopped off the bed, spritely as a fucking nymph. We all watched him leave. As soon as the two men had left the building, I threw up my hands in anguish.

"Fucking Spina!" I cried to the heavens. "I will kill that man. I will hang his balls up on my fucking wall like a trophy!"

"As if it didn't stink enough in here," Muck observed as he looked over his cards.

The smart ass remark flew straight over my head; I was still upset over the fact that I'd lost to a fucking _medic. A first aid jockey for God's fucking sake! _"I was so close to cracking him!"

"Are we still talking about nuts?" Martin piped up. He sounded more nervous than inquisitive; could I really blame the poor man? It was a sensitive subject amongst the male populace.

"Are you going to fucking play or not?" Liebgott snapped, motioning to my untouched hand. "I'm growing gray hairs on my ass waiting for you."

"I'm fairly sure those have been there for a couple of years _at least _Lieb," George duly noted as I sat down next to him.

Lipton, the sensible one of our motley group, shook with laughter beside me. The feeling of being soaked in the sound of it was like a warm embrace after a long, cold winter.

* * *

After months of P.T., the company was finally moving on to bigger and better things.

We received the announcement of being removed to Camp Mackall the morning of our one hundred and twelfth day of boot camp.

All of us were dog tired, straight down to the roots of our bones, and I nearly fell asleep in my slop twice after a long night of little sleep (someone had been having very naughty dreams indeed, probably Liebgott from the sound of the voice) and what would be our last trip up Currahee. Twenty minutes up, twenty down. Our best time yet.

George had to drag me out of my food at least once or twice during the course of the meal and Gene just watched from across the table, silently assessing the situation. Wondering if there was anything he could do, perhaps, as was his modus operandi. I still hadn't forgotten his narrow escape from our poker game and schemes began to separate themselves from one another and categorize in my head. George never wondered what I was thinking. He already knew it wasn't decent and so was content enough with knowing his influence on me was still strong as ever.

Near the end of 'breakfast', First Lieutenant Winters stood up and cleared his throat. Immediately the noise in the room died down. It was no secret that Winters was widely respected by all, even the reluctant Guarnere who couldn't stand the fact that his First Lieutenant wasn't Catholic. His reasoning seemed a little one-dimensional to me, but who was I to say anything? I couldn't stand a guy back home just because of an irritating fucking stutter.

We all looked up at him, some with mouths half-full and slack, the morning sludge dripping out of the sides of their mouths.

"I've got an announcement to make to all of you, on behalf of Lieutenant Sobel," Winters declared to the hushed room. "At 14:00 hours, we will be moving out of Toccoa and be relocated to Camp Mackall to begin primary training."

A few cheers erupted as Winters dismissed himself from the center of attention and sat back down next to Lewis Nixon, who looked a little worse for wear himself even from the other end of the table.

"Holy mother of God, I thought we'd never escape this place," George breathed a sigh of relief.

"We're just being moved to another Sobel-occupied Hell on earth," Malarkey shrugged cynically. "Until that man is completely out of our lives, there will be nothing to celebrate."

"A little morose in light of such good news, Malark," I said. "I mean, come on. We're at least escaping Currahee. One out of two banes of existence removed from our daily routine…that's not bad for a company of worthless shitheads like us."

"God, I fucking _hate _packing," Liebgott sulked as he lifted his fork to his lips. "I always feel like I'm going to forget something."

"What the hell, Lieb, you're a grown man," George laughed aloud, unable to contain his glee at such a perfect opportunity for relieving his need to belittle something on a daily basis. "Who packed for you when you left home? Your mommy?"

Liebgott's pained gaze suddenly turned murderous. I decided it would be better for everyone, especially George, if I staged an intervention to help lighten up the mood again.

"George," I nudged him as I stabbed absently at my food. "Your mommy helped you pack too."

A few snickers circulated around the group, but Liebgott couldn't control himself at receiving such delightful news; the Jew let out such a throaty laugh which filled up the room to its brim that even Winters himself couldn't help but look and see what all the commotion was about. Gene bit back a smile and he bent his head, pretending to find something interesting in the pile of slop that lay untouched on his plate.

"Insisting on carrying out my suitcase because she didn't want me to pull a muscle, Private _Austen_, does not qualify as _helping me pack._"

"Georgie's mommy didn't want him to hurt his little self?" Martin managed to say in between winded little sniggers.

Liebgott joined in, still slapping his knee from the hilarity of it all. "Aw, did she fold your underwear for you too George?"

"Great, this is just fan-fucking-tastic," George leaned back in his chair, chewing over the situation carefully as if it were a very meaningful line he'd come across in a book. "Accusations of being a momma's boy are now going to stick to me like glue. Thanks, Max. An early Christmas present and it isn't even close to fucking Thanksgiving yet."

I gave George a playful nudge, a hopeful endeavor to soothe ruffled feathers and mend all strains between us, but perhaps his pride had been wounded too deeply.

He didn't bother returning it.

* * *

By the time 14:00 hours came and went and we found ourselves on a train to North Carolina, all had been forgiven between George and me.

On the train, once we had boarded, he slumped down next to me and mentioned something about a long nap and promptly settled in. He let me take a snooze on his shoulder as the train started to lurch slowly forward. I fell asleep to the rocking motion of the train moving beneath me and the warmth of George's body snuggled close to mine; his head rested against my temple and I heard him heave a contented little sigh before I slid into a peaceful doze.

When I woke, the sun had moved and the world looked as if it were thrown beneath golden shadows. Gene Roe sat quietly across from me, his blue-gray eyes illuminated by the gentle light as he watched the scenery fly by in a blur of green and blue skyline.

Guarnere was next to him, fast asleep, his head drooping into his chest and Liebgott was sitting the next row over, looking rather like a petulant child with his arms fastened across his chest as he slumped low in the seat. But his face appeared calm, almost thoughtful in its serenity, and I paid no more mind to him. He was simply enjoying _not _being shouted at and having to run up the steep slopes of Currahee for once.

I stretched and George's head slipped. He made a little noise in his sleep, but didn't seem to move much. His temple was pressed against my collarbone and I could feel the rhythmic in and out pulse of his breath against what little bare skin there was to be found underneath the fatigues. Gene didn't even look away from the window; he seemed transfixed in deep thought.

"'Ey, Gene," I said, my voice still heavy with sleep. "When did you get here?"

"I think you fell asleep before I came in." He replied, his eyes still searching the horizon.

"I won't argue with you there. I don't think I've ever been as tired in my entire life as I have been these past few months."

He allowed a small smile of agreement. "I don't think I have either."

I continued on. "And George here…he's about as pleasant as a wolverine in the morning. It's definitely taking some getting used to, seeing old Luz up before sunrise."

"You were friends then," Gene began. "Before you came to Toccoa?"

"Oh, yeah," I waved my hand indifferently. "George and I can trace the origins of our friendship all the way back to grade school. He was the little brat who stole my slate pencil and I had to wrestle him in the mud to get them back."

Gene snorted. It sounded so foreign coming from the Southern gentleman that I almost mad a double take, expecting to see Toye or Muck bent over and riding out the last of a very hearty laugh.

But it had been him for certain. I just hadn't thought such a thing was possible as a sound like that coming from Eugene Roe.

"Sounds like an interesting start to a friendship." He said with a wide grin.

"It really was," I replied, nurturing a nostalgic smirk that had been revived by the memory. "But once we got past childhood, it worked out in the end. We're still here."

I looked over at my sleeping friend. His eyelids fluttered as he raced through a pleasant dream. He breathed in, a soft, vulnerable sort of noise, and released it; the warm air flooded over my neck like a wave and I was sort of lost in it for a moment. Gene didn't seem to mind at all the tapering off of words. He sank back into a companionable hush, tranquil and unaffected by the rickety movements of the train.

I pressed my cheek against George's disheveled hair, closed my eyes and wordlessly thanked God I'd come along. Maybe another nap wouldn't be such a bad idea.

* * *

A/N: So, second chapter. Chyeah! A lot of the other Easy boys were involved in this chapter. Because, like I said to someone else, friendship is a character in of itself in this series. So expect a lot of friendship, but there will also be little progressions in Luz romancin' in every chapter. Or...you know...whenever I decide it's time to add another one in! Thanks, by the way, to britt, anonymous and Miluielwen for the reviews! They were all appreciated and taken directly to heart! Glad I was able to entertain. Hehe. :)

**Also, please do excuse Maxine's bad manners. She's got a dirty mind and she's hormonal and poor George is basically a best friend/sex object in her eyes. She will grow up. Don't worry! :D**

Please, feel free to let me know if I'm doing anything wrong. Or if you're feeling generous...what I did right! I love reviews. As do most writers. So...yeah! :D

disclaimer - Rick Gomez's Luz is a sexy beast and I only wish I owned him. BoB belongs to Ambrose, Spielberg and Hanks!


	3. Of Sex Organs & Inedible Food

We'd all been given our bunking arrangements before boarding the train back in Georgia. It had been a priority. Find out where you were sleeping (which was mostly dictated by what platoon you were in) and _then_ you could worry about where to pack your skivvies so you would be able to find them when you got there. That was also a bit of a priority. Nobody wanted to see a man without underwear.

At least, this was Liebgott's dilemma; the boy was smart, mouthy, could pack a mean punch and work up one hell of a tempest of a temper that would put even a _hurricane_ to shame, that was all for sure, but we all had to wonder. Was it _really _that hard to figure out how to do something as simple as packing a duffel bag?

I had trouble with it too back home, but that was before my belongings were reduced to a wrapped brick of chocolate, P.T. gear, a standard issue rifle, a helmet (complete with the fashionable spade trademark on either side), fatigues and a shit-green uniform. Now it was easy as counting or singing the ABC's; I could do it with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back. Granted, it would take an enormous shit on what little time I had to relax, but I _could _do it if I really wanted to.

There was no desire to play cards once we flipped on the light switch and beheld our new sleeping quarters. Just drop our bags and take a swan dive into bed.

It was pretty much the same deal we had back in Toccoa. The same cots that could have probably been manufactured better by three year old's with Down Syndrome than these, the same lights that sometimes flickered on and off and scared the swarms of mosquitoes that found their way in when the guys didn't shut the door all the way behind them.

The quarters even boasted the same pitted wood frames that held dusty, fingerprint-covered windows as the ones back in Georgia. The glass looked like it hadn't been touched with a cleaning rag since George Washington was born; it was certainly going to be a joy cleaning those things during fatigue duty.

Some of the boys didn't think much of it as all they were capable of thinking about right now was getting some shut eye. The rest couldn't give a fuck where they were quartered as long as they had a place to take a shit, a mattress to sleep on, food to eat and a roof over their heads to keep out the rain. Grateful as I was to have all these things, I found it fucking unsettling how the guys who built these places seemed to have the same pitiful ambitions – the bare minimum and that was it.

Then again, it was the military. Bare minimum was regulation. We were training for war, not beauty contests; there was no need to look prim and proper when our days were comprised of crawling through pig guts, sweating our asses off and learning all the different ways to kill a Kraut.

"I think my ass was worked less running up Currahee," I announced to the room, rubbing my sore backside with a hiss of pain. Trains might have been an easy method of transporting large amounts of people across rural countryside, but hell if it wasn't complete murder on the sitter.

Too tired to care, I received mostly grunts in reply from my comrades in arms. _Don't all of you jump at once to crack a joke or God forbid a smile now._

The common consensus was that dreams were the most beautiful things God had been kind enough to bestow on us at the moment; they couldn't care less about sore asses or even the mosquitoes that were feasting on their bare legs and arms as they lay face down with their faces squashed up against an old, lumpy pillow. Even George, who basically slept the whole trip down here with the exception of the last hour (during which time he busied himself with working on his impressions of Captain Shithead Sobel and, his favorite Southern drawler, Major Horton), was down and nearly out by the time I climbed into my cot and heaved a sigh of relief to be able to lie down.

Someone turned the light out; probably Shifty Powers, the lucky bastard who'd scored the cot closest to the door. George's dog tags flashed like quicksilver in the moonlight that filtered through the window over his bed as they rose and fell in unison with the pace of his measured breathing. Liebgott shifted a little on my left, making the mattress springs creak.

I was tired, but it would be a while before I could get some shut eye in a new place. I'd been so used to listening to the frogs croak and the crickets singing outside that it became second nature to fall asleep to the nocturnal racket. It was silent outside this barrack. "'Ey George."

"What?" My interruption of his peace elicited a small, pitiful whimper. "Can't you see I'm trying to sleep?"

I ignored him. "Do Horton one last time."

"Huh?"

"Come on," I begged, my cot squeaking in protest as I sat up eagerly into a sitting position. "Just _do_ it."

Liebgott's raspy voice rose up from the soundless void next to me. "I'm going to knife the both of you if you don't shut your fucking mouths."

"Can it, Lieb," I shot back, turning again to face George. His pale bare chest expanded with a deep, calming exhalation. "Come on, old buddy, one time. _One. _Humor me just this once and I promise – I will let you go to sleep for the rest of your natural born life if that's what you want."

He considered this a moment as he appraised my look of earnest, then gestured to the pack of Lucky Strikes that bulged out of my breast pocket. "You'd better throw in a free smoke because this is one huge fucking favor," he said, his voice gravelly with exhaustion. "You're interrupting my very important beauty sleep."

I groaned, thinking of my bleak, future fate, the day I reached for a cigarette and found only a box of empty promises just because I found George's impression of the whiskery, ancient Major _the _best fucking thing since sliced bread. Bread didn't make you piss your pants, but god damn the day that George Luz's notorious (and not to mention rather hideously spot on) impersonations didn't either.

But, at the moment, it seemed worth it; then again, I wasn't prone to making any real good decisions after long trips and short amounts of rest.

"Fine," I sighed and took one of the nicotine-filled paper sticks out of its box. "You fucking smoke junkie."

"Well ain't that the berries! I thank ya kindly for your donation to a good humanitarian cause short stack," he replied in the Major's accent.

Lieb, despite his sleep-deprived grouchiness, gave a snort of laughter and then turned on his side, his drowsy, mussed head propped up on one elbow at the junction where his temple ended and the high, attractive plane of his cheekbone began. He began to watch us banter; it was probably sort of like watching animals in their natural habitat – amusing as fuck if not a little bit unsettling at the same time.

"That doesn't' count you know," I dictated. "It has to be when I say or it isn't fair cause I just gave you my _second_ to last smoke."

"Well I am very sorry for missing the coronation, your royal highness," he replied in his own voice. "Last time I checked, this was a room full of sweaty men and shitty cots, not the royal fucking bedchamber."

"Just do it already so we can all go to sleep, would you Luz?" Martin's plea came to us from across the tiny room.

"Fine, you bunch of tyrants," George surrendered. "Don't get your knickers in a twist. I'll do it. Okay? I'll do it."

He cleared his throat. We all leaned forward a little in anticipation of what was to come; it wasn't often that George's uncanny ability to irritate a deaf-mute at his own funeral was actually…_requested_. Usually he liked to aggravate us when we were standing at the threshold of lunacy…no sleep, no food, ears still ringing from Sobel's shout-happy voice being shoved through them like a red-hot poker. And not to mention, smelling like the rotten corpse of a flea-bitten mutt fused with the aroma of a pair of dirty, sweaty old socks – these were the ripest moments when the slightest bit of commentary from the peanut gallery was turned into the match being thrown into the proverbial powder keg. Dangerous and only done by those who didn't mind an explosion of opposition in return for his efforts.

Usually it only ended in a little verbal abuse or a death threat, but George could deal with those easily. Those were hardly successful deterrents. It was the slugs to the kisser that he didn't take to as well.

From where I was sitting, I could see the stark shadows shift and slide as his Adam's apple bobbed up and down, preparing the voice behind it for the imitation.

At long last, he spoke. The words of the Major before we left Camp Toccoa were presented to us. "All right, boys. In a few short months, you's all gonna be shipped off to Europe to give them sum bitch Germans a piece of the good ol' American dream! Now today we begin primary. It _will_ be tough. It _will_ be grueling. You _will_ cry for your mommies. But in the end, when you get those shiny gold wings and become the official first paratrooper unit in the history of United States military forces, you'll be none the worse for it and damn if you won't be a little too big fer yer britches by the end! Go whole hog out there, men, don't fer one minute hold back…and ya'll make yo CO's happier than a puppy with two fucking peckers."

The entire barrack erupted in a fit of rib-cracking chortles. Except for Gene…he must've already been out like a light and missed George's latest stroke of genius. Poor Cajun fucker.

"George, that was hi-fucking-larious," I tossed him my lighter; a prize for his achievements. He caught it and the clicking sound of him igniting the end of his smoke rose up over the slowly tapering laughter. "And to think…I'm lucky enough to have the master teaching me how to _properly_ ridicule men of high stature."

Liebgott sighed dreamily. "Man, if only I had two peckers."

"And a cry rose up out of the slave women of Egypt," George recited, his lips curled around his cigarette. "_Thank you God! Hallelulah_!"

"Now that would be a good old time," A smile. Just thinking about it made my stomach do flip flops. The things men could do with _one…_hell, how would women survive two of them? "And Lieb, watching you try to figure out where to put not just one, but _two _dicks in PT gear would be vomit-inducing. Isn't tucking one up your ass enough of a stretch?"

"Literally a stretch." George deadpanned.

I choked on a laugh and threw a listless punch at my best friend. He ducked, narrowly evading my fist as it flew straight for his smart mouth. I missed; well I'll be damned.

"Trust me, it could be done." Liebgott countered.

"Listen to yourself, Max," George cut in again, his lips popping together softly as he released a thick cloud of smoke into the cool night air. "This is Liebgott we're talking about. This, my highly dubious friend, is the man who could _easily_ talk a nun out of her habit if given the opportunity. You think, if he came across the miracle of having two peckers, he would actually give a fuck if he could fit them in a pair of shorts? He'd just stuff them in his socks and go on his merry way."

"All right, you guys, that's enough," Martin ordered groggily. "Go to sleep. We've got a long day tomorrow."

"There's not enough room for another mother-hen Lipton in this company, Martin." I retorted. George's rascally little giggle clashed with the silence beside me.

Before long, it was quiet again. Liebgott drifted off to sleep, probably into the arms of a dream about having two penises. Sweet dreams indeed. Martin's soft snores began their night-time tempo across the way and I wondered, briefly, if his wife missed lying next to a sound she must've hated for so long. George was still milking every last speck of nicotine out of his cigarette and every so often, in the darkness, I'd hear him breathe out smoke rings. Gene's section of the room was so silent I had half a mind to get up and check if the Cajun was still fucking breathing. For a few minutes, I listened closely for a sound from him. A little contented murmur surfaced from his downcast mouth and my maternal instincts grumbled a little bit as they returned to the dormant part of my existence, where they'd been waiting for the last eighteen years of my life. A shame, really, as they had been so _enthusiastic_ about having to be useful for once.

"George?" I asked.

A pause. "What?"

"You ever miss home?"

"Sure, yeah," he replied. "A little. Why? Do you?"

"Yeah," I admitted. "I never thought I'd live to see the day where I would actually miss that lard ass, big-mouthed fry cook down at Benny's burger joint. Or ma. You know, I think she actually believes I went off to California to go to some fancy-schmancy university and make something of myself. As if I'll ever be anything more than a lazy, good-fer-nothing smart-ass. A rebel without a cause..."

I trailed off into the path of a dangerous train of thought. Those were the last words uttered for the day under that roof.

George never answered me; he simply reached his hand down into the inky gloom that lay stretched across the wooden floorboards and put out the stubby remains of his cigarette.

* * *

Sobel's inspections were getting sloppy. Or else his super-human vision was failing him. I had skidmarks on my skivvies and he hadn't even noticed as I was studied and then promptly passed without a second look in my direction.

It was Infraction Day. Known to the CO's simply as weekly examination. This common-as-law routine happened regularly back at Toccoa and therefore, since the military was a stickler for habitual practices, it was carried out here as well. We lined up, decked out in uniform complete with standard issue Garands and Carbines slung over our shoulders, and stood at attention as the Lieutenant appraised us with hopeful eyes. God, I could tell he was itching to find something, anything, to bust us on. But we were careful now. We were holding onto those weekend passes for dear life and the only way Sobel was getting them was if he pried them out of our dead, cold fingers.

Nothing incriminating was uncovered. He gave a small, dismayed huff, clearly disappointed. "At ease."

I could almost hear everyone sigh in relief as they gave their aching muscles a reprieve. My back was already killing me from sleeping on a _new_ rusty piece of shit cot which I would have to become accustomed to. I prayed for the day to move a little quicker and made a mental note to ask George for one of his downright _delectable_ massages with those magic hands of his after dinner. It was only eight o' clock; there was a long day of suffering to look forward to.

"Today, we will be beginning primary," Sobel announced as he started to pace through the columns. "I said at ease, not slouch like a Neanderthal, Private Christenson!"

The sound of a rustling uniform interrupted the usual morning broadcast.

Lieutenant Shithead resumed with a clearing of his throat. "As I was saying…" he paused, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the man throw what was _supposed_ to be a glare capable of inflicting instantaneous death if not taken seriously at Burt. I wondered, fleetingly, if being _bored_ to death was possible.

"This morning we begin primary. During this training, you will learn both defensive and offensive tactics, hand-to-hand combat, fighting positions, enemy weapons, maps, et cetera! Practice makes perfect and so there will be organized exercises which you will carry out in your respective platoons and _under _your platoon leaders. And during all of this, you will also be lectured on the specifics of your positions. You will learn everything that is important to successfully carry out the orders of your CO's and do what we are supposed to - kill the Krauts and win the war."

If he wasn't such a shithead and a dictator, I would've rewarded the man's words with a hearty _Currahee! _The rest of the guys probably would have to. But as a testament to their hatred for Shithead Sobel, they remained silent as church mice during Sunday morning mass.

He stopped pacing. I could mistake him for serious if I didn't know him any better.

"This is why you are here," he said and every face, every man in this company, could not escape his scrutiny. It pierced us all. "This is why you have become a paratrooper."

To kill people wasn't why I was a paratrooper.

My heart sank as it tried to grasp the real reason I was here. Only one seemed to be the most valid justification while at the same time…I realized it was the most illogical.

I was here because of George Luz. Plain and simple.

* * *

By lunch, we were all exhausted again.

I'd punch out a nun just to have a nap. Hell, I'd punch out a whole slew of them for a pair of clean underwear and a nice hot shower.

For the better half of the day we'd been out in some godforsaken field somewhere in rural North Carolina learning how to dig foxholes with shovels that seemed to be made for child's hands. They were _that_ fucking small. They had to be to fit with the rest of the luggage we'd be dragging along with us as we jumped out of a moving plane over one thousand feet in the air, but being on the ground and with little else to carry but a helmet and a gun changed my stubborn perspective for the time being. I'm sure once I was up there things would look different. Ant-sized even.

Gene had so many splinters to tend to that I was surprised he didn't do something rash like curse up a storm and go kick a tree or something equally unexpected of his usual withdrawn demeanor.

I was also confused as to why we weren't given gloves in the first place as it would have prevented the exploitation of the medic's assistance. But it seemed as if they liked seeing us cry like infants over a tiny little sliver of wood being lodged in our skin. Hell they might have even got a _kick _out of the idea of endangering our fingers, which were rather important for firing a gun or wringing bare Kraut necks.

It was probably the joke of the season, maybe even the year – _Hey, check this one out Captain So-and-So. Trust me you _will_ be rolling. One of my non-coms during the foxhole exercise, he was sobbing for his mommy after he got a little tiny fucking splinter. Isn't that fucking funny? Ain't that rich? Hardy har har._

I sure as hell wasn't laughing. Not with my bleeding, now patched up finger I wasn't.

The only explanation I could derive from the lack of protection for our hands was that they were shaping us up for the hardships of war. If we didn't have gloves behind enemy lines, we couldn't just go into town and buy a pair for five cents. No, we had to make do or run the risk of being shot, blown up, or anything ordinarily unpleasant that could lead to possible mutilation and/or death.

It was good enough for me.

Mostly what I learned from this particularly useless exercise was how to dig my own grave and how gentle Gene was with a pair of tweezers. I'd had little pieces of tree lodged in my fingers before, so this was nothing new, but being tended by a pair of hands that felt more fit for something of a softer profession, like a doctor, was certainly a bit of a lovely surprise. When I thought of medics, I thought of quick, agile fingers that didn't care if you were in pain, they just had a job to do.

But even if he was in a rush, Gene was as calm and collected and careful no matter what speed he was working at. He got the job done, no matter how small it was. But the trick was he got it done _nicely_ and seemed glad to be useful.

The food here was no different from the stuff we ate in Toccoa and since everything else mimicked my old home of three months at this new hellhole, I was beginning to think they'd hoodwinked us and picked the whole camp up from the Georgia backwoods, just stuck it down here and slapped a new name on it just so we wouldn't suspect any funny business. A silly thought, but not really unwarranted considering the circumstances.

"What did they hire the Toccoa cook's twin brother?" I asked with a grimace, lifting a spoon in front of me that was dripping with pale yellow slop. It looked like hospital snot – the kind sick people blew out of their nose when they had some deadly disease. "This looks like the same shit we ate there, too."

"Does it matter? It's food. It all comes out the same place." George shoveled an enormous bite into his mouth and practically swallowed it whole without bothering to chew. I'd heard his stomach growling all morning; at least I wouldn't have to listen to it during afternoon lecture too.

"At least it's not spaghetti," Toye said. "I'm afraid of that shit now. Every time I see it I think of throwing my guts up back at Currahee."

"What a shame. Spaghetti is an Italian classic. I could go for some of my ma's home-cooked noodles and meatballs," Guarnere replied.

He always seemed to talk out of the side of his mouth; in many ways, from the sound of his voice down to his most insignificant mannerism, he kind of reminded me of Popeye. The sailor man, not the adorably blond and dimpled Robert Wynn who just happened to be sitting across the room with his best pal Shifty.

Tying together the Guarnere and Popeye correlation, in turn, left me craving spinach real bad.

"If we're talking food, then I'd love a fucking burger with onion rings. The greasier the better," Skip muttered wistfully, his eyes locked on his plate of food as if staring at it would turn it into his heart's innermost desire. "And a strawberry milkshake to wash it all down."

"Fuck, you know what sounds good right now?" Liebgott swished his tongue around his mouth as he swallowed. "Hot apple pie and vanilla ice cream."

Deep, unmistakably male rumbles of agreement passed over our table.

"How about this," Lipton offered, smiling as the thought occurred to him. "A big slab of steak and a side of corn on the cob. With fresh butter and a beer to go with it."

"Don't mention meat and beer, Lip, while I'm fucking starving!" George balked.

"I cannot believe they have the gall to call this food," someone down the rows of picnic tables mentioned. "It wouldn't even pass as cow shit."

The table shared lopsided grins and laughs of accordance over the commentary and returned to their daydreaming.

"What about you Gene? What sounds good to you if you had your druthers?" I asked, continuing my efforts to include the man in our conversations that _didn't _involve screaming medic over little fucking splinters.

The Cajun looked up from his food, dark eyes thoughtful. His spoon hung languidly in his hand. "Shrimp gumbo sounds a lot like heaven right now," he suggested.

"Good ol' Cajun cooking eh Gene?" Sisk, who was sitting next to the doc, gave him a playful nudge to the shoulder. He blushed and returned, ever the observer, to his food without another word.

Perconte threw down his utensil with a irritable growl. "What would you wanna bet this is another method of Sobel's torture?" He gestured angrily to the plate. "I can't even eat this. I'd rather fucking _starve_."

"Oh, go brush your teeth Frank." George joked. Perconte shot him a heated glare.

"It's usually not this bad, Perconte," Lieutenant Winters, who continued to astonish us with his sporadic displays of humility by sitting with the common folk like us, spoke up. His eyes followed the movements of his spoon as he raised it above the plate and let it plop back on the bumpy white surface. "It's a little burnt, more so than usual, but it's edible."

I received this optimistic assurance with a mouth full of the stuff. And _stuff _was exactly the right word for whatever this goop really was. "Permission to speak candidly, sir?"

"Permission granted, Private," he replied.

"Pigs don't shit gold turds, sir."

Lewis Nixon, Winters' right hand man, smirked as he registered this comment. George, always the sore thumb of the group, was the exact opposite of Nixon's wordless amusement; he snorted loudly and _proudly_, along with the rest of the men at the table who had been within earshot of the smart-ass remark.

Lieutenant Winters chewed this over thoughtfully for a moment, but obviously he wasn't so good with understanding the intricacies of sarcasm. He obviously hadn't grown up with George Luz as a constant reminder that language was more than just straightforward answers and stupid questions during class.

"And that means what in English, Private Austen?"

I straightened up a little in the presence of a great man. Now _here _was a CO that had earned not only my respect, but the respect of the company. "It means, sir, that just because it seems possible that this stuff is fit for human consumption doesn't mean it actually is."

Winters smiled a little, a pensive, almost sad twist of the mouth. "An interesting colloquialism, Private. I'll remember that for later when we're living off fry cook cuisine in the middle of the forest with nothing but cans of old beans to eat and damp twigs to heat them with."

Sounded like a plan to me if I ever heard one.

* * *

Immediately after lunch, a lecture on German weapons was scheduled for our platoon. Everyone had different agendas depending upon their platoons; it was sort of like school, but more like being in Hell with pencils and a teacher who found screaming in your face a lovely pastime.

As was usual, I plopped down next to good old George Luz and tried to stay awake while the instructor, a familiar face, began pacing to and fro in front of a blackboard. Yeah, it was definitely just like school. Complete with me trying to stay awake after being forced to think way before my brain's competency kicked in for the day. All it was missing was George making paper airplanes and launching them at the back of the teacher's head while he wasn't looking. Or lighting his pencil on fire.

Whatever seemed the least relevant at the moment, George was usually doing it.

But he was smart enough not to risk punishment or worse just for a few kicks. He listened attentively. The least we were afforded was an interesting lesson. All kinds of small-caliber guns and artillery were introduced to us, the most popular being the German Parabellum Pistol – the Luger. Hoobler sat up real straight in front of me once the Luger was mentioned. If I had been able to see his face, it probably would have looked sort of like a kid walking into a candy store for the first time. Slack-mouthed awe, eyes bright as diamonds caught in sunlight and complete with an expression that could only be explained as total captivation.

The Luger was a beauty to be sure. Complete with toggle-lock, it was a semi-automatic hand-pistol that operated on recoil and was sort of like the gun of choice for the Germans. It was said to need a strong grip to load the goddamned thing, so I probably wouldn't be able to reload the magazine even if I ever did get my hands on one over in Europe. This all depended upon the facts they'd gathered being true.

What was not debatable, however, was the fact that almost every man in that room wanted a Luger after the lesson.

George included.

"You took notes?" He snorted as I folded and then put away a few sheets of ink-stained paper into my pocket. "This ain't high school, Max. They won't slap your hand with a ruler if you don't write down every single thing they say."

"You know me," I replied. "I like to waste my time writing things down. Though, I'm sure I'll probably be able to recite the properties of a Luger with my daily prayers after having had those details drilled into my head for a good solid three hours."

"They want us to know what a gun looks like," George said. "Well goddamnit, I guess my training was over before it even began."

I bit my lip as I struggle to stifle a persistent yawn. "And so it was for every other man in this unit."

I suddenly recalled what I had been thinking earlier during Sobel's initial inspection as a cringe-worthy spurt of pain shot up my aching back.

Lowering my voice, and checking my surroundings for any nosy ears, I shifted a little closer to my friend. "Hey, George," I whispered, looking around again just to make sure I was completely safe. "Would you be a doll later on and help me out with my back? It's aching like some bitch and I can't reach."

"Yeah, you know…" He mocked a wince as he pulled up his trousers a little. "I've been real sore lately too. Would you mind giving me a little massage?"

"You too?" My eyes widened. "Where at? Show me."

"I hardly think that'd be proper."

"Why the fuck not?" I scowled. "Come on, George, I've seen you running around wild as a fucking Indian in nothing but your underpants. I think I can deal with seeing you without a shirt on."

"It's not that. It's much worse than a sore back," he corrected.

Curiosity was _killing _me. "Well what _is _it then?"

He sucked in a long, heavy breath. "My poor pecker has been out of practice for so long that it's starting to cause actual _physical _pain."

It was one of those rare occasions when I didn't know if George was actually joking or not. "Are you fucking with me right now?"

He sighed, continuing in that oddly measured voice of his. "Unfortunately I'm not. Would you like to though? There's a bathroom right over there," he gestured to a shithouse across the way. "Perfect place for a quickie before P.T. Although, I'm not sure you'd have an easy time explaining to Sobel why it is that you're walking like a duck with hemorrhoids and couldn't _possibly_ run."

"Yeah, because that's _exactly _where I want to lose my virginity," I rolled my eyes, then started as someone ran past me. "Up against a wall in a place that people go to take a shit."

"I've heard it's quite exciting."

"For you maybe." I retorted.

"What can I say?" He gave me a placating shrug and adorable smile. His dark eyes twinkled as the afternoon sun hit them just right. "My best masterpieces have come to fruition on the porcelain throne."

"Fruition is a word, but not exactly the one I'd use when describing taking a shit."

An excited voice piped up from behind us. "Who's taking a shit?"

"Sobel," I replied, watching as an inquisitive Shifty Powers, Hoobler and Popeye Wynn came trotting up behind us. "A figurative dump on the rest of our natural born lives."

George gave an endearing little giggle. The one that I deemed a favorite a long time ago in grade school…it was as adorable then with missing teeth and eyes that were bigger than his stomach as it was now coming from the full-grown George with stubble and typically boorish manners.

"Did you guys get a load of that Luger?" Hoobler's elfin grin made his lively eyes crinkle. "Boy, she sure is a beaut ain't she?"

"I'd like to get my hands on her springs if you know what I mean," George concurred with a suggestive elbow to the side.

Popeye scrunched his nose as he caught the joke. "Springs. That's a good one George."

"I _aim _to please." He replied.

"Fuck you're just chock full of bad jokes today aren't you?" I scoffed.

"Who says my jokes are bad?"

"Would you like me to write it out for you George? So you can better understand what I'm saying?"

"Well, you know what? Fuck you, Max."

"We already discussed this."

"Well we're discussing it again."

"You two are a regular hoot and a holler," Popeye cut in. Obviously the boy was not accustomed to the tense banter that erupted between my old friend and me.

"Flash!" George squawked in an impressive Major Horton parody.

"Thunder!" I called back.

The two of us started jogging back to our barracks. Shifty and Popeye trotted after us as Hoobler separated from our small pack and reported to his own quarters to change into P.T. gear.

As usual, I fished my gear out of my duffel bag and promptly made my way for the nearest bathroom. On my way out the door, I caught sight of Gene sitting on the edge of his neatly made up cot as he tied his shoes.

"Eugene Roe!" I said, clapping him on the shoulder as I neared him. "Well _how-dee-do _partner?"

He smiled and out of my peripheral vision I could see him lowering his eyes back to his laces once again as I left.

George was waiting for me, looking fine as frog hair, when I came out of the latrines a _changed_ woman.

Literally.

* * *

By the time we were dismissed for the day from primary, my back was a plethora of painful knots.

A lot of our fellow roommates were already snoring into their pillows when George and I came sauntering in. The lights were turned on as the sunset began to fade outside and it became too dark to see without them; the sound of its intermittent flicker was drowned out by raucous voices. It was a wonder anyone could sleep with such a racket going on.

George had already agreed to helping me with getting my muscles to relax before we reached the barracks. He slid his duffel out from underneath his cot as I followed suit. Once we were both equipped with a towel, a bar of soap and a change of fresh clothing for a shower, the cover we'd decided on, we headed for the door.

"Anyone else getting a shower before some shut eye?" George announced to the room.

A chorus of _naw's _and _no thanks' _reached us and we walked outside into the cooling twilight. The showers were a little closer to our sleeping arrangements this time and therefore we ran a lighter risk of being caught than back at Toccoa. It was also smaller. Another plus for me.

"All right," George sighed as he walked inside the shack and promptly tore his shirt off. The muscles in his bare back rolled like grass bowing on the hills back in Rhode Island under his skin. "You get undressed and I'll turn on the shower."

I didn't reply, simply did as I was told. First my shorts and shirt and then my wrap. I didn't bother removing my underwear as they were dirty anyway and due for a wash. George seemed to have the same idea; as outgoing and completely lacking in timidity as he was when it came to his body, he figured he'd keep his on as well.

"You ready for my magic hands?" He grinned through the streams of water trickling down his face. His hair was soaked through and plastered to his forehead. The sight was unfairly beautiful and I had to actually _refrain_ from drooling.

"Show me what you've got Luz."

"Get in here." He motioned for me to join him and then promptly shut the door to the stall behind me.

I stood there, naked, for a moment as he worked up a lather. Part of me was a little unnerved about the fact that I was almost completely free of clothes while in close proximity to George. This same part was even doubly unnerved about the little _fine_ detail that he was unclothed as well and looked completely and utterly _stunning_ without them.

The other half, the more tired and less sexually interested portion of my innermost being, was glad of the prospect of getting these aches worked out of my back. I tried to listen to the more rational girl than the one who was practically panting over the lack of clothes and water between George and me.

She was just completely annoying at the moment.

I wouldn't take her shit. Not in this kind of pain.

His hands came in contact with my bare back and I tried my best to restrain a shiver of delight. I failed miserably and hoped that he took it as surprise rather than arousal.

"Fuck me what is this?" He began massaging the aching flesh. "Are these muscles or shoelaces back here?"

"Sleeping on that cot is _murder _on the back and you know it," I replied. For a second, we were both quiet. I leaned my forehead against the slick tile and allowed myself to enjoy the unraveling of the knotted muscles. My eyes closed and I breathed in a contented sigh. "George?"

"Yeah Max?" His voice was soft, soothing even.

"Thanks," I told him, offering a smile even though I knew he couldn't see it. "I appreciate your magic hands."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a grin break the concentration that had made lines in his young face. "You're welcome," he replied and, in a lower voice, added, "_Maxine_."

The sound of my name rolling off his tongue seemed to complete the calming effect and I could almost fall asleep up against this slippery wall, nearly completely naked and with swarms of men threatening the existence of my pretense surrounding me outside this shelter.

At the moment, I didn't care. I was just too goddamn glad that my back was loosening up and that the water was pleasantly lukewarm and that George's hands were on me. I was as happy as a lark.

"How does that feel?" He said, gently smoothing out a little bundle of tension in my shoulder blade.

"Like heaven." I murmured groggily.

"You getting tired?" He asked.

"Yeah, a little."

"A few more minutes and we should head back, all right?"

"Sounds good."

His hands were a little callused after years of work and play, but it only seemed to complete their magic-like qualities instead of break them. It was a thin layer, not thick enough to be considered the result of hard, back-breaking labor, and some parts of his fingers were still soft, even, from little exposure to harsh elements and hard work.

This time, as his hands slid, agonizingly slow and deliciously arousing, down the curved length of my spine, I was able to suppress the physical desire to react to it. He wasn't doing it to be sexual or lewd; he was doing it to help a friend in pain.

He could be serious when he wanted to be. It just took the right question or a certain situation for the sober side of George Luz to be summoned to the surface. As much as I loved light-hearted, teasing George, I could appreciate his sobriety in a circumstance such as this. His composed behavior made it all the more relaxing.

"Max?" He said, dragging me out of a light doze.

"Hmm?" I opened my eyes. They rested at half-mast until he turned me around. My arms, which were positioned over my chest to keep myself at least relatively decent, tightened instinctively.

I looked up at him and noted, with a laugh, that he was all wet. His eyes were dark in the lack of light and his thick, brown hair was beginning to stick up in all sorts of comical directions and his black eyelashes were made all the more stark against his pale skin. His brow quirked. Along with the corners of his mouth.

"What are you laughing at, huh?"

"You looked like a soaked rat." I teased.

"Yeah?" He chuckled. "Well you look like a drowned mutt."

I returned his goofy smile. "Well, then I guess we're in the same boat."

He didn't respond to this, simply reached for me and took my small frame into his arms.

I sighed into his warm, velvet skin as he pulled me into his thin chest and held me there. I was a willing captive and he knew it too as he flattened the palms of his hands against the small of my back. While he slowly settled into the embrace, I felt him rest his cheek against my hair. He sighed too, content and comfortable with our being so intimately close to one another as we'd done this so many times in the past that it had become like second nature to us. We were both very physical creatures and enjoyed the console human contact could afford.

As I stood there, his cheek pressed against my scalp and his fingers resting on my hips, I realized I could've been enveloped two times over with those long, lean arms and I wouldn't have minded one bit. Not at all.

I could hear him breathing, a soft, mellowed resonation that filtered through his entire upper body, from where I stood with my head resting against his ribs. The sound of his heartbeat flooded my ears and I was filled with the gentle cadence as it mirrored my own measured pulse. He began to rock me side to side as he would a child. Back and forth. If he continued much longer I'd fall asleep right where I stood, on my feet, and be just fine and dandy with it.

"As stupid as you were for coming here, Maxine," he began, and the words echoed, muffled, throughout his torso. "I'm glad you're here. I would've missed you too much if I'd left you back home."

"I'm glad I'm here too, George," I replied, my lips brushing against him. He shivered a little at the unexpected brushing of skin against skin, but nothing else came of it.

_I'm glad I'm here too._

* * *

_A/N: _Woo hoo! In the words of Donald Hoobler - that one sure was a doozy! Although, we're talking about chapters here, folks, not shiny black Lugers._ So. Sorry these are so fricken long. Hopefully they can keep your attention. :P _I know that you know that I know...yeah, this is getting complicated. Basically they talk about sex a lot. And food. But have you ever heard a guy talk? It's like this. _Sex. Food. Sex. Food. Gotta shit. Sex. Food. Sports. _Well, at least these are the typical conversations of the guys _I _have to listen to all day. Man, having a lot of guy friends sure does put a damper on your fragile female delicacy. My dear boys, as much as I adore them, have a terrible effect on my femininity. They talk just like the Easy boys...at least the way I've portrayed them. So I guess a lot of my inspiration comes from being steeped in man culture on a daily basis.

Super big thanks to **_Miluielwen _**who has been a big help to me! Hopefully she'll be able to help me out with all this military malarkey cause I have no idea what I'm talking about. There...I admitted it. _I have no clue about military goings-on. _The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Well, folks, I have a problem!

Anyway, have fun reading! Remember...reviews are a writer's chocolate! I will be as happy as a pig in the mud if I get some. Even if it's some con-crit...it's feedback! Don't be shy...come on up and tell me what you thought! I won't bite. Not unless you flame me. Then I might gnaw on you a little.

Thanks for reading kids! Have a super duper day!

disclaimer - Rick Gomez's Luz is the cheese to my macaroni. If I owned him, my noodles would taste a whole lot better. Kudos to Ambrose, Spielberg and Hanks for owning this character and the Band of Brothers series.


	4. Easy's Invasion of Europe

"You'd better duck and cover, George." I announced, and almost every man, even the ones shuffling forward to board the idle aircraft, turned around to look at me with wide, nervous eyes. When someone uttered the words _duck _and _cover _in the same sentence around here it usually meant one or two things – Shithead Sobel was coming straight for us looking bloodthirsty as hell or there was a whole lot of projectile vomit coming their way.

The latter, thankfully, was the case this time around.

"You toss those cookies on me, Max…" George replied, throwing a nervous glance over his shoulder. "And you'd better be prepared to fucking lick them off my backside."

"I wouldn't wish such a fate on Captain Shithead himself," I retorted, struggling to move forward as the combined weight of the parachute and the stomach-churning dread curling around my belly began to pull me down.

_If there are any refusals at the door, gentleman, I guarantee you that you will not get your wings._

Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck. _

If only I'd remembered my fear of heights _before _I decided to traipse the backwoods of Georgia after my stupid fuck of a best friend.

Well, goddamn if it wasn't a little too late now for _shoulda woulda coulda's_…I'd already invested the best weeks of my summer on this shit and I wasn't backing out even if my mother herself, God bless her belligerent soul, came marching down that airstrip looking mean as a fucking bulldog with a hernia.

No sir! Not after all those exhausting runs up Currahee and starvation on pig-grease, good for nothing army slop and simulated three-feet practice jumps in the sand (boasted a sprained ankle after the first two…Sobel was so happy to see one of his maggots in pain that I swore he was shitting roses for a month). Not to mention the easier parts of training, the ones that still blew puffy white clouds up high school's ass and made it look like the pearly gates of Heaven itself in comparison. Hours of lectures on the history of German artillery, trying to figure out ways to hide bloody underwear after a mean run-in with the ever vindictive Aunt Flo in a camp full of men and God forbid I mention the dreaded, the infamous, the terrible..._Infraction Day._

It was truly something of a miracle that my body had forgotten to develop curves through high school.

After all those years of bitching and moaning about having the figure of my bone-rack of a pa…now I prayed to any deity that was brave enough to lend an ear to my stranger-than-fiction pleas to be spared of a female physique. _Please, for the love of Pete, __**don't **__answer my prayers now. Keep them for later…when they're necessary and won't get me shot for impersonating a soldier in the U.S. army!_

The line inched forward. George easily ascended the first two steps; I decided it would be the perfect time to put into practice his fairly new game, which he lovingly christened _Grab Fanny _(god bless my boy for being so creative with naming his evil plans), as the biggest ass of an opportunity was literally staring me right in the face. I couldn't resist; I reached out and gave George's cheek a good right pinch. Surprised by the unexpected feeling of someone's hands on his ass, he tripped over the last step and landed at the feet of one Lieutenant Nixon.

"Hope you weren't planning on pursuing a career in ballet after the war, George." Nixon quipped with a devilish smirk.

Laughter rose up behind me. Hell, even _I _couldn't suppress a giggle at such a sight as George the fucking Legend of Comedy Luz taking a swan dive straight into his superior's feet.

"I think you missed a spot there on your boot, Lieutenant Nixon, sir," George said as he regained his balance. A stark, scarlet blush stained his pale cheeks; I was certain that, if his ears hadn't been hidden beneath his helmet, they would've been a lovely shade of cherry red.

Nixon glanced nervously down at his boots, only to find the perfectly burnished surface of his footwear before him, not a blemish in sight. George's naughty little giggle echoed throughout the aircraft.

"Close, but ultimately no cigar," Nixon replied.

During this exchange, and as George's olive green-donned figure disappeared into the back of the aircraft, Liebgott decided he was done with waiting. He gave me a violent push and I stumbled forward onto the first step. I looked over my shoulder at him, struggling to see the Jew's face over the parachute they'd slapped on me, and saw his lips curling into a complacent little leer.

"I'm getting fucking old waiting for your ass, Max," Lieb remarked. "_Move_ it."

I continued up the stairs, leaning over a little and patting one solitary cheek. "Hey Lieb, why don't you give it a nice kiss while you're down there, huh? Pretend it's your nice little Jewish dream-girl with big titties 'cause that's the closest you'll ever get to one."

Lieb didn't seem to like my smart-ass remark, but rewarded me anyway with an impatient, rather angry shove in a vaguely frontward direction. Luckily I had been expecting such a response from the hot-headed Jew and braced myself for making the floor's official acquaintance with my face.

The only thing that crossed through my mind, having been shoved face-first through the entrance, was how nice a spot of tea sounded right about now.

I stared blankly at the shiny black tips of Lieutenant Nixon's shoes and tried to remember the mechanics of how to stand up.

"I've got a couple of klutzes on my hands here," Nixon's smooth, almost cynical voice originated from somewhere above my head. "That or I did such a good job polishing my boots last night that you boys can't help yourselves from having a closer look at my expertise."

"Those _are_ some handsome boots, Lieutenant." I drawled mockingly.

At last, I managed to haul myself and the extra weight of the parachute to my feet. Most of the seats were already occupied by fidgeting hands and restless legs and the air was already choked with cigarettes as nervous fingers lit up a nice, calming smoke to keep their wits about them. A few men stared blankly ahead, their brains switched off as they prepared for their first jump, while others seemed lively and attentive in the face of possible death by free-falling a thousand feet in the air (with nothing but a silk sheet with some measly strings attached to them to keep us from becoming road-kill at the end of the plunge). George was rather in the middle of these two very separate categories as he was the life of the party, as per usual, but his jokes seemed a little distant, even from my proximity from the group.

Nixon's attractively thick, black brow furrowed as looked up from his clipboard and he realized his cruel fate standing in the entrance of the aircraft. "Aw, fuck, don't tell me I've been saddled with the Bobbsey twins..."

"No, sir, but if I may speak freely," I replied, trying hard to mask the derisive undercurrent in my voice as I addressed my superior. "I'm boarding this plane for my health, sir. Doc Roe's orders."

Nixon smirked, his eyes scanning the arbitrarily sorted list. It would've made his job so much easier if they would've just alphabetized the fucker, but that would've been too hard for the desk jockeys to handle. They might piss their pants if they had to actually put their nerdy little fingers to good use.

I guess they all figured up in the ranks that we were used to constant frustration anyway; a little addition to the daily shit pile wouldn't hurt us none.

"I wouldn't follow Doc's medical judgment too religiously, Private," he deadpanned. "Especially since medic training didn't include the study of mental instability in midgets."

"I'm a late bloomer, sir." I shot back as the plane erupted in peels of laughter. My cheeks burned like hell.

"You stopped growing at birth, Max," George interjected.

"As did your brain."

"All right, girls, that's enough."

"And anyway, Lieutenant Nixon, sir, you should be proud. Captain Sobel must like you, or at the very least trust you, to put the lives of his only source of comic relief in your very capable hands," I replied.

"You know, that might have been a good explanation, Private, if Sobel had a sense of humor," Nixon countered teasingly. At last, in the midst of distraction, he located his elusive target. "Go sit your ass down before I write it up for insubordination."

"Yes, sir," I saluted him as he checked off my name on the sheet before him. "Thank you, sir."

Many of the men already seated couldn't help but laugh as they took into account a rather unavoidable observation, one that even a blind man or a mole rat in the pitch-black dark couldn't miss; I didn't even have to duck as I made my way through the boot-littered, ash-riddled aisle way that separated the left side from the right.

Hell, I couldn't reach the metal roof with my fingertips, let alone with the top of my head.

George, who was twirling a cigarette in his fingers, joined in on the ill-mannered chuckles that berated me and my lack of intimidating height. I noticed his legs were stretched out, reaching almost completely into my side of the plane, and took the perfect opportunity to exact my revenge. I stomped on one vulnerable boot before taking my seat next to Roy Cobb, who was sweating bullets and looked as if he might toss his own cookies.

He cursed loudly and, like the cantankerous, underdeveloped, and yet somehow equally lovable child he was, retaliated with hearty kick to the shin. It smarted a bit, but ultimately the victory of smudging three hours worth of scrubbing those little black sons of bitches with a toothbrush made the pain of his payback bearable. I tossed a wicked, toothy grin at him and motioned for a cigarette; he complied, an olive branch between our warring persons, and held the lighter to the end of the paper as the rest of the men entered the plane, were checked off and promptly organized into their respective seating arrangements. I had the pleasure of being placed next to Liebgott, who was obviously still sore from my Jewish-girl-with-huge-boobs comment.

When it came to large assets on a woman, Liebgott was all severity. No one messed with his dream girl. _No one._

His revenge was promptly carried out; he stole my cigarette right out of my mouth before I even got a chance to enjoy the first inhalation.

I watched, hungry, as he placed it in his own pursed lips. "That was _mine_."

He sucked in a deep, nicotine-riddled breath from _my _smoke, emphasizing his ownership of it. "I don't see your fucking name written on it," he said, surveying the object which symbolized his retribution. "Pay back's a bitch, ain't she?"

Hoobler, the Luger-obsessed Private with the most adorable pair of bright eyes and a smile to match, chuckled merrily as he sat next to a beaming George and witnessed my torture.

A smoke ring was blown into my face. I blinked and blindly groped for the derivation of the blinding gust, my short arms flailing as I tried to retrieve my precious nicotine, but Lieb was too strong. Once the air cleared and I was able to see again, I watched, dismayed and a little heartbroken, as Lieb ran his tongue over the length of the rolled-up, white paper. Part of me couldn't help but be a little aroused by the impropriety of the sight of my cigarette being thoroughly violated by Joseph Liebgott's attractive, if not completely belligerent mouth.

The other part wanted my fucking smoke back.

"I take back what I said about your big-breasted aspirations," I pleaded. "Just give me my _fucking _smoke you _fucking _bastard!"

He grinned, obviously enjoying watching me squirm. "Too late. Should've thought of the horns _before_ you messed with the fucking bull."

Something akin to a snarl escaped my slack mouth. "You think that's going to stop me from snatching that out of your fucking hands?"

"For fuck's sake," George intervened, snorting with laughter as Hoobler slapped his knee with it beside him. The engines roared to life beneath us; the door was shut and Nixon hurried to his seat. "Take a new one before you get yourself killed over a fucking cigarette, all right? Courtesy of George Luz. No, please…don't thank me. It's my _job_ to look after your scrawny, underdeveloped ass."

"You're a real fuckin' angel, you know that Luz?"

George shrugged and set fire to the butt-end of my beloved prize. I owed him _big _for sacrificing all his smoke rations for me. "So everyone keeps telling me."

My hands shook as the shit-bucket excuse for plane raced down the runway behind the others. It rattled as it struggled to take off, making my stomach do nervous flip-flops, and all I could think about while it finally caught the current of the indolent summer breeze and lifted into the warm, blue-as-forget-me-nots sky was how badly I wanted to hold George's hand right then and there.

I stared at it, lying limp in his lap, and tried to remember its healing qualities as the plane rose higher into the clouds.

* * *

It became clockwork after those five miserable fucking jumps for me to not be able to walk. My legs would turn to jelly the second I rose from my seat with my fellow comrades on the plane to make my respective leaps and it would be a struggle just to make it to the exit. Luckily I had George behind me every time. He was number six out of twelve jumpers. I was five. As he sounded off for equipment check, he'd lean in while I inspected Lieb's parachute in front of me and whisper a few words of encouragement into the shell of my ear.

It was a good thing that George knew how to curb his asshole tendencies at the most opportune times.

Or else, as I sat there in the bar surrounded by thick, celebratory clouds of smoke and the smell of beer, I wouldn't have my trousers bloused over my boots and a pair of silver wings pinned to my uniform, smiling like a fucking dummy and singing a happy little ditty to myself.

"Do I detect a classic?" George asked as he slid over to me behind the bar, his eyes turning glassy from the alcohol. He wasn't even near intoxication after the three pints he threw back like old hat; I, on the other hand, was a lightweight and was still working on finishing my first one.

"Care to join me in a drunken rendition of Josephine?" I offered.

"How fucking appropriate of you, Max," he said. "Did you pick that song on purpose or was it accidental genius, huh?"

"Accidental, I'm afraid. I've wasted too much brain matter listening to you all these years." I nudged him insistently as I took a long draught from my drink. It was getting warm after sitting there, nestled in between my hands, for the last half-hour as I struggled to finish all of it.

"At least I'm good for something," he replied.

"Come on, George!" I brought my fist down on the pitted slab of wood that served as a bar, a little clumsily if I was not mistaken. "Take the reins, my good friend! Put Snow White and her frilly little forest-voice to shame!"

"I had no idea Snow White ever sang Josephine," Malarkey cut in as he arrived at the bar.

My head began to hurt as my brow knitted together in bewilderment and deep contemplation; thinking was just too much work right now. "Funny, I can't either. George remembers though, don't you George?"

"The only thing I remember is that one time you drank too much moonshine and ended up swearing to high fuckin' heaven that Old Man Largey's flea-bitten pony down the street had traveled with the Russian ballet."

"Oh fuck!" Malarkey's liquor-soaked giggle broke through the brain fog that had settled over my head in thick, thought-consuming tufts. "I've heard some strange fucking shit tonight, but I think that one takes the cake."

"And trust me when I say it won't be the last." George replied, his brow dancing suggestively.

Gene, who usually wasn't one for inter-company mingling, had decided to make an exception that night and throw caution to the wind for a few drinks with his boys. It was funny that I hadn't noticed him coming in with the rest of the hoard, but as I'd taken to drinking a little early in the night, it was probably not as much of a surprise that I didn't see him as I made it out to be. He had appeared out of the shadows, like some Cajun ghost revived from the boggy graveyards of his beloved Louisiana home, and out of the crowd just as quiet and dark-eyed and _handsome _as ever. Handsome? I frowned as this thought flitted through my head faster than a jackrabbit. When had I decided _that? _

Apparently the second I saw him in uniform with bloused trousers and a red-cross medic band on his arm.

He reached the bar, accepting a good clout on the back from Malarkey and a loud, obnoxious greeting from George. The Cajun smiled, bashful as he buried his head in the collar of his olive-green shirt, and shrugged off their affectionate greetings.

"Can I get a drink, George?" He asked politely.

I decided this was the perfect time to integrate my drunken ass into the conversation. "Only if you sing Josephine with me, Cajun!"

The medic looked to my old friend for an explanation.

"Rumsoaked." He replied.

All was made clear with one simple word that didn't even make much sense in the first place. How did one become soaked in rum without _bathing_ in it?

"Come on Gene! Let me hear that voice of yours! Is it as magical as your hands?" I leaned on him for support and the aforementioned appendages latched onto my uncoordinated shoulders. Fuck, since when had it gotten so hard to walk?

"I don't think you should let him have any more," Gene mentioned to George even as I took another long, greedy drink. "He's too light to be drinking much."

I knocked back yet another long swig of rum; it was as if I could sense that Gene was going to try and take it from me. I wanted to get it down before he got his pearly-white hands on it.

George shrugged, feigning innocence. "Who am I to ruin his big night by telling him he can't have another beer on me, huh?"

I took another long, greedy drink of my rum. "Come Josephine, in my flying machine!-" I began loudly and, upon hearing the lack of baritone in the background, behind my own overbearing voice, I turned to the Cajun, who was quietly and inconspicuously removing the drink from my reach. "I can't hear you Gene! Don't leave me hangin'!"

"I think it's time you had a nice sit," he replied, ignoring my demand. "Here we go, Maximillian. Nice and easy, now. Not too fast or you'll send your head spinnin'."

For some godforsaken reason I found his comment hilarious. Probably because of the way he said it, in his thick southern accent that would make prayers on Sunday sound like fucking comedy. "Fuck, I do love a good spinnin'."

"I suppose you like bending over a toilet seat too," George replied with a snort. "Cause you, dear, foolish old pal of mine, are going to be best friends with the shitter by the end of the night."

"George!" I lunged forward, recognizing the sound of his voice in the fog, then blinked as the world went fuzzy for a minute. "George, you old Rhodey fucker, let's go a-spinnin'!"

"Sure, right after you sleep off some of that alcohol," he replied.

"What alcohol?" I cried, looking around frantically for my drink that I'd already forgotten had been confiscated by a certain sneaky Cajun medic. Funny how things slipped my mind these days... "Where? Why the fuck in fuck haven't I gotten any...holy shit, I forgot what the fuck we were talking about!"

I let go of my hands and let them slam against the wood. The sound of skin crashing against solid wood and the little tendrils of pain it sent after threw me in a fit of giggles.

They were all a little quiet as I sat there wheezing and guffawing over nothing. In between gulps of air, I motioned clumsily to George, who was staring at me with a barely contained smile playing on his lips. "C'mon boys! Josephine's a-waitin' on us! A-waitin'...a-waitin' - can we still go a-spinnin'?"

"Yeah, he's definitely checked out for the night," Malarkey said.

"___Going up__, ____she goes_!___Up she goes_!" I continued, remembering the song. If the Cajun wasn't going to sing then fuck…I'd sing all by my damn self.

George chimed in, taking up the slack I'd left in my sudden dizzy spell and bellowed out the words of the old classic above the sounds of the revelry all around him. Malarkey joined in and the rest of the men took this as an invitation to strike up the old proverbial band; they followed their example and the room was filled up to the brim, almost deafening, with joyous singing. They were all just tickled fucking pink that they had finally, after months of Shithead Sobel, earned the right to call themselves paratroopers.

Halle-fuckin'-lujah, life was a can of fuckin' peaches.

Gene struggled to keep me sitting upright as I sang haltingly along, more often forgetting the lyrics than remembering them, with my brothers in arms. The bar was filled with the sound of deep, masculine voices as their lips curled into shit-eating grins over the ancient song of our ancestors.

_Balance yourself like a bird on a beam_

_In the air she goes! There she goes!_

_Up, up, a little bit higher_

_Oh! My! The moon is on fire_

_Come Josephine in my flying machine_

_Going up, all on, Goodbye!_

By the end of the first refrain, I let out a long, wet belch into poor Gene's unsuspecting face. In the time it took for him to pause, his entire expression contorting in mild disgust with the smell of stomach acid and rum filling up his nostrils and clouding his brain, I rolled, unconscious, off the barstool and collided with the beer-stained floorboards below.

* * *

When I came to, the first thing I noticed was that the room had caught fire.

And the second…that my head was fucking exploding with pain.

I groaned and squeezed my eyes shut as the ache nestled deeper into the center of my brain. It felt like someone had stuck their fist into my ears and decided it would be fucking glorious to grab a nice chunk of it and start crushing the cognitive matter with their bare hands.

"Holy fucking miracle of God," Lieb's usually soft, rather soothing voice suddenly felt like a red hot knife through the temples. "He's alive."

"Something you won't be in five fucking seconds if you don't get your ugly fucking mug out of my fucking face."

"A lot of fucking going on in here," Malarkey's familiar voice chimed in. Chuckles broke out amongst them and I just felt like _dying _as the cruel, stabbing noise grew.

"Alive and apparently it hasn't lost its ability to swear," George added. "Thank God he's remembered all the important stuff, eh Lieb?"

"Fuck you, Luz."

"I might take you up on that offer if you don't watch your little p's and q's my contrary Jewish friend," was the acerbic reply.

"Enough you two," Lipton interjected from my right, ever the maternal voice of the group. "Don't make me whip your asses."

"Oh, Lip," George rebutted humorously as he fanned himself. "I never took you for the closet kink."

"I'm thinking a little bit of Lieutenant Nixon's experience with the bottle wouldn't be a bad idea right about now," Shifty cut in as Lipton failed to answer (probably because George received a glare capable of killing the Devil himself and decided _not_ to tempt fate, but I could only rely on guessing with my eyes closed).

The other southern gentleman's voice came from somewhere on my left-hand side. He made sure to use the _proper_ intonation typically utilized around one suffering from the aftermath of too much drinking and not enough body mass to hold it properly.

"Disturbing the Lieutenant won't be necessary," another disputed astutely, gliding gracefully into the conversation from behind Shifty. "All he needs is a whole lotta water and a few aspirin and he'll be good as new."

I couldn't mistake that deep Cajun accent for anything in the world but Eugene fuckin' Roe. A savior dressed in muted green fatigues and a beacon of light for those who are stupid enough to drink their weight in rum and not consider the day-after consequences. The bed creaked a little and I felt Gene's warm back against my legs; his body jerked as he pried open a pack of aspirin on the first try.

"He'd better," Malarkey, whose presence was rather a source of confusion for my throbbing, groping brain as he wasn't even assigned to this barrack. "Who knows if Sobel intends to punish us for proving his ass wrong."

"Sit up for me, would you Maximillian?" Gene crooned softly. I opened my eyes as I attempted to sit up like I was told and immediately felt like sticking forks into the sockets; it would have hurt _less. _

My head swam and my stomach turned over on itself; everyone, including Gene, leapt out of the way as they realized the look on my face was one of impending vomiting. I emptied my stomach all over the left side of the floor. A chorus of profanities and expressions of disgust met my ears as I gasped and trembled and pressed my palms against my temples to stop the world from spinning. Only Gene, Lipton and George were brave enough to make contact as the medic tried to stuff some pills down my throat and George assisted him, holding a glass of water for me to take.

"Well, I'm officially getting the Hell out of here." Malarkey announced. The rest of the guys followed him in murmurs of agreement and they all rushed to the door to escape the smell that had begun to perforate the room.

"I'm real sorry you guys," I groaned miserably. Gene took my hand and put a pair of pain-killers into the upturned palm.

"You're lucky you didn't get that shit on my boots," George replied. "It took me hours to get them this clean."

"I'm sure your boots appreciate your concern more than I _ever _could," I retorted savagely.

"You'll feel better sooner if you take the aspirin," Gene interjected. The boy had no sense of humor, at least none that _I _could see.

"Sure, ma, I'll do whatever you say," I replied, tossing the pills into the back of my throat and chasing them down with the water. I didn't realize how fucking thirsty I was until the first gulp when down easily, fluidly, like the first sip of rum did last night. Before I knew what I was doing, the entire glass was gone and George was chuckling at me, apparently fighting to bite back a wisecrack for my own sake.

"There. Now just…keep drinking the water to clean the poison out of your system," Gene advised me as he stood up, evading the sight of my stomach contents spilling and trickling into the veins of the floor like putrid blood.

"It's poison and they let us drink it?" I balked, nearly choking on the water George had brought for me.

"Never mind that," George said. "Hurry up and drink that cause you have some stomach acid to mop up before we start packing."

Everything that was said before the word _packing _was mentioned flew right out the window. Packing. As in…duffel bags and trucks and trains. As in _leaving. _"Packing for what?"

"Oh, you mean no sarcastic reply for that one?"

"What the fuck do you mean by _packing _George?"

"I guess he missed Colonel Sink's announcement last night," Lipton suggested.

"Lying unconscious in one's drool with the medic hanging over you and checking for a pulse," George rebutted thoughtfully, pausing as if to reflect on the situation for a veritable answer. "It does tend to have a _forgetful _effect on people."

"Thank you, smart-ass, I couldn't have figured that for myself," Lipton snapped. The smile they exchanged, however, seemed to negate the harshness of Lipton's words and traded them for the levity of companionship. Even brooding Gene Roe cracked a smile in honor of the pleasantry as he polished a bright red apple on his sleeve across the room.

"What did I miss?" I asked again.

"We're heading out within the next few months," Lipton replied.

For a minute I just looked at them. Something inside shuddered at the revelation. "Heading out as in...leaving?"

"The very same," George replied.

"What…what about the rest of training?"

"Well, we're not departing right away, but once we do leave Mackall I'm sure we'll be completing primary at the new base," the Sergeant replied. "They told us we'd be heading out whenever the next place was ready for us...whenever that will be."

The only sound that filled the room after Lipton's response was the apple Gene had sunk his teeth into and the almost empty echo of his chewing floating across the barrack.

* * *

The months passed quickly after my little encounter with the drink.

For the first month following the incident, I couldn't be seen anywhere without being announced by the chorus of _Josephine _that followed me around like a fucking shadow. George would usually join in and would just as often receive a nice punch in the ribs for his efforts to turn my cheeks red. It didn't deter him, no matter how many times he got kicked, stomped on or slugged, which I attributed to my lack of strength and inability to leave a bruise. I would've thought that months of training with Shithead Sobel, who ran us ragged and then ran us some more and then some more until we puked and then a little more after that…

The point was I was beginning to worry whether or not I could kill a Kraut if I couldn't even leave a mark on my best friend. A short, rather unintimidating man who was considered small for his species; what injury could I inflict on a brute twice his size? Three times? God forbid the possibility of _five_ times. If a man who could boast seven feet existed then I was as good as dead anyway, no need to worry about killing anything. A fucker that huge could knock my sorry ass all the way into kingdom come and beyond.

It went without saying that as our time at Mackall dwindled and the threat of being shipped off to Aldbourne came closer to becoming more than just a phantom or a nightmare that kept me wide awake at night, I became quieter. As late August rolled around and September began to loom before us, my thoughts turned inward and I studied the reasons for joining the paratroopers more closely than just surface value and came to find nothing but superficial justification for my efforts. It happened mostly during the times I needed concentration the least. Foxhole digging exercises and meals were examples of instances when brain activity was hardly needed.

Another was witnessing to Shithead Sobel's increasingly obvious ineptitude in ways of leadership, as was becoming a much talked about subject amongst the soldiers and had reached its peak during the June 23rd tactics exercise, almost immediately after we'd received our jump wings. The son of a bitch couldn't even read a map, much less lead an exercise in military tactics. It was becoming obvious to all the men that Sobel was going to get us all killed if we jumped with him; Winters would have been a much more logical choice, considering his ability to think quickly under pressure.

Liebgott took to thoroughly polishing his bayonet during fatigue duty after that particular exercise.

Showers that had turned awkwardly silent between George and I were also an occasion where I could let myself tumble aimlessly through my own uncertain reasoning for joining the Airborne. During lecture, I could pride myself upon an attentiveness that stemmed from fear itself and nothing more, but no one needed to know such things except me.

The motives I found after months of reflection were worthless at best.

George was the first and foremost that popped into my head the second my mind turned toward the subject.

Escaping indolence and a dead-end job was another.

Making something of myself was one that I glanced at fleetingly, but ultimately dismissed as I realized I didn't really give a flying fuck if I became the President of the United States because it just wasn't something I cared much about.

I was without ambition, a soldier fighting for no cause except to keep an old friend alive and well.

And it scared me because I couldn't place any more straight-forward answers as to why I was here.

George tried his best to revive me from my terror-induced stupor, but with little success. It was troubling to him, being that he was the master of dragging even the most reluctant smiles out of anyone, and I found that our conversations mostly turned to why I was quiet, what the hell was wrong with me, what was I thinking about. He wanted to know and, before long, I couldn't resist telling him.

It'd been during one of our stolen moments, when I ran a lazy, soap-covered hand over my skin to clean off two weeks' worth of grime and the water soothed my restless head. George would be standing outside the stall, a cigarette in his hand and his feet visible beneath the door.

It was late August before I confessed anything to him. Anything at all.

"George?" My voice had been nothing more than a whisper.

"Yeah?" He'd replied after exhaling his smoke.

"I…don't..." I told him, on the brink of tears. "I don't think I can do this…I don't know if I can make it to another camp."

"And why the fuck would that be?" He asked.

"I'm…I'm scared," I'd admitted at last. "I'm scared out of my fucking mind and I don't…I don't know if I can go through with this."

The second he heard the threat of a sob creep into my voice, he threw open the stall, keeping his eyes locked on my face, and closed it behind him. He shut off the water and just stood there as I collapsed into his chest. I didn't care if I was soaking him through. He didn't seem to either. George Luz, for once, simply let me cry into his shirt and fist my hands in his thick hair and didn't breathe a word. I remembered that he smelled like cigarettes and the scent was calming.

I was quiet in a matter of ten minutes, during which time George's clean white undershirt grew soaked and stained with snot and tears and his fingers had combed every sodden knot out of my hair.

That had been six days ago.

Today we were leaving Mackall.

September 5, 1943 brought to us a clear and cloudless dawn. We were awoken by Lieutenant Winters who came by to make sure everyone was hauling ass to make it to the trucks that were beginning to park near the mess hall to take us to a train, which would take us to Brooklyn, where we'd board a ship heading for England. My stomach was nothing but an enormous cluster of nerves as I made my bed for the last time with shaking hands; I told myself I wasn't going to miss that useless pile of old, rusty springs but hoped, prayed even, that we'd get the same sort of cots over in England. Some familiarity would be nice.

The barrack packed mostly in silence, too bleary-eyed and busy to converse. Mostly the banter kicked in after the boys had all their shit packed up and were ready to fly, but even then the room stayed relatively quiet as the rowdy ones left the remaining occupants behind.

They didn't even look back once at their home of at least four months. Most of them didn't think much of sentimental shit like that. Hell, I was probably the only one that did.

George and I were one of the last to leave. He'd finished much earlier than I had, but stayed behind to keep a close eye on me.

Gene was another straggler; our eyes snagged on one another as we looked in each other's general direction. We remained in a deadlock for a few terrible seconds, in which I saw something like realization in the Cajun's unsettlingly dark eyes. He was beginning to wonder about me; I was letting my guard down and he was slipping through the slack defenses.

I looked away and followed George out of the nearly empty barrack.

Once every man had been shoved into a truck, we were driven away from the camp. The rest of the guys were now lively and they tossed jokes around even as their last chance to escape their fate as the marked dead and already wounded faded into the mottled green and brown distance.

Malarkey, Lieb, Skip, Shifty, Hoobler, Perconte, Martin, Lipton, Gene and George all surrounded me. As selfish as I was for wanting to jump out of a moving truck and claim insanity, I knew I couldn't. I'd be shot or sent home to a very irate mother who'd likely restrict me from weekends for the rest of my natural born life.

There was no use trying to escape because I'd likely just be pulled into another hell altogether.

The ride was long and uncomfortable. After a while, many of the boys slipped into an uneasy nap while others just sat and mulled things over to themselves, content with the quiet that had slipped over the convoy like a sweaty old blanket. Hoobler, ever the adorable young man with dimples, snored across from me and Lipton had his arms crossed with his head slipping closer and closer over onto Lieb's shoulder.

The Jew himself, however, was wide awake. He was staring at me, his eyes narrowing every now and then, as if he were trying to figure out what was clearly a change in personality. I simply stared back, wiggling my eyebrows and making stupid faces for a while until he laughed, but then he'd turn serious again, as if he couldn't be distracted from his purpose, and we'd slip right back into a grim stalemate as if it were routine.

George napped most of the way. He'd leaned back after the first few minutes and slipped, quietly, into a still doze. No dreams, no mumbling and not much movement other than when the truck hit an enormous bump and sent everyone flying for a few stomach-dropping, heart-stopping seconds of being stuck in mid-air.

Lipton started awake and looked over at Lieb, who returned his glance with a knowing little smile. The sergeant then apologized and tried to go back asleep, this time with his head firmly placed against the wall. Hoobler and George didn't budge; they slept like babies almost the entire way.

Once we reached the train station, we were unloaded. I nudged George gently awake, telling him we were there, and he smacked his lips together sleepily as he tried to work the bad taste out of his mouth. Lipton roused Hoobler, who looked around all bleary-eyed for a second before realizing what was going on. Everyone moved out of the convoys and gathered into groups as they waited to board the train. The trucks drove away.

That was one escape plan down the drain; I inwardly cursed myself for having missed it.

In our small cluster, most of the boys were much too rowdy with the excitement of not having to be lectured or do any _running _to keep calm and quiet. George, after a nice, long nap, was certainly chock full of piss and vinegar, and took to playing cards with Sergeant Martin, Perconte, Popeye, Shifty, Cobb and I. All I learned from the game was how terrible I was at blackjack and how to blow a perfectly good pack of smokes in a matter of minutes.

As George dealt another hand, my ears perked up with the sound of Lieb's voice rising up from behind me. And while Lieb was rather hard to ignore on account of his obtrusive loud-mouthedness, it was the subject that caught my attention the most. Shithead Sobel. The bane of our existence since the first time we put on our PT gear and ran Currahee.

Some of them mentioned his incompetence while others simply tore him down without drawing conclusions from his multiple fuck-ups with tactics and map-reading. Someone joked about the army's choices when it came to leadership, its ability to make _mistakes_. Lieb, as usual, lunged straight for the throat of the matter and vaguely mentioned fumbling a grenade to get rid of the fucker.

But the subject was dropped for some reason immediately after the comment was made. I credited the sudden hush that settled over that group at first to Sobel, but breathed a heavy sigh of relief to see Lipton as the culprit as the man slipped quietly by. Not a word came out of him while he made his rounds to check on the men to pass some wasted time.

We all waited, patient, for our train.

Once it arrived, the usual bustle erupted amongst the company as they all clamored to get a seat. It was a bad habit, one we would all have to be broken of after the war (if any of us survived, that is), that was cultivated after months of fighting over showers, over food, over anything that merited some value of ownership really. It could've been a fucking turd sitting in the toilet and they'd all be desperate to claim it was theirs. Just to own up to something. It hardly made sense, but then I was used to being confused by the male gender.

George and I nabbed a seat next to Bull, who was nursing a cigar as usual, and Talbert.

Talbert didn't say much as he fell asleep, a common occurrence amongst men in the army, almost as soon as he sat down.

Next to me, George heaved a contented sigh. "Jesus Christ it feels so fuckin' great to sit down for more than ten minutes straight."

I smiled at him and though we'd been sitting on our asses for the better part of the morning, I couldn't help but agree with him. We were always such a happy bunch when it came to trains and trucks and boats. We could just sit and talk if we wanted. Or play cards or trade smokes or just sit and watch the world float by on patches of green and the invisible line where earth and sky meet at the horizon.

Gene was sitting a few rows away, but I could see his stark, pale features plainly from my place next to the window, staring out at the scenery like he usually liked to do in his free time. Next to him was Guarnere, who was playing with is lighter as an unlit smoke dangled out of his mouth.

"Hey, Bull," George's voice pulled me out of my thoughts. "Got anymore of those?"

Bull plucked the cigar out of his mouth. "Cigars?" He clarified.

"No, the _ponies _you've clearly got hidden in your uniform," George chuckled amiably. "What did you think I was talking about?"

"With you, George?" Bull shook his head and slid a cigar out of his pocket. "You can never really know for sure."

"I'll take that as a compliment," he replied, receiving his prize with eager hands. "Oh, fuck does that smell like heaven!"

"Sure does," Bull agreed, baring his teeth in a big smile. "Need a light there?"

"Naw, got my own." George replied distractedly, puffing on the deep brown, rolled up paper.

Tired from the long trip up to the station, I fell asleep, slowly, to the beginning traces of George and Bull's conversation.

When at last we arrived at the station, I was dragged out of sleep by a pair of gentle, but insistent hands. George murmured something in my ear, but the words were lost to me as I stared at the thick smoke that was peeking out from behind a massive building. Here it was…the final threshold. The train was unloaded and we were herded closer to that ominous black cloud. I tried to remember how to breathe and, in a moment of weakness, I clutched the hem of George's uniform.

The movement was so jarring and so urgent that George looked down at me, questioning, before he took in the expression on my face. He looked around twice before lowering his hand to gently brush it against mine. It was all he could offer at the moment, unspoken console that would have to do for now, as the yard was bursting at the seams with soldiers readying to board the vessel and settle in for what would be a long ten days.

I found myself looking up at that tall, foreboding freighter with a stomach made entirely of knots. I was desperately trying to keep my composure, keep from vomiting, as George nudged me forward, the palm of his hand crushed to the small of my back to help me stay the panic that I could swear he knew was bubbling up inside of me.

A great belch of black smoke rose up out of the smokestack and the vessel released a long, almost mournful cry as the fifteen-minute warning horn was bellowed into the late afternoon sky of September 6, 1943. The day I left home with only the clothes on my back and an old friend at my side to fight the war in England. My throat was stuck on a sob that I kept swallowing back and my eyes were burning with tears that I buried in the back of my head.

I wanted to scream, jump into the water, make a scene, pull my hair out of my head and run for safety, away from the big black boat that would carry me out of arms of my home country, but I knew none of that was possible. I was numb and I could hardly move without George's assistance; it was a miracle I made it below deck, where I was lead through a room stacked to the roof with at least ten hammocks to a row.

So this would be our home for the next ten days.

Fuckin' amen to that.

Searching for an available sleeping spot was next to impossible, so finding two together was a quest comparable only to finding the holy grail. George nudged me gently along as my frozen limbs struggled to carry me forward, the duffel bag slung over my arm like a dead weight that threatened to pull me under the sea of boots that nearly tripped us as we walked by.

At last, however, George pointed up to two that were set high up near the ceiling, one at the very top and the other just beneath it. Lieb was close by, as was Malarkey, Guarnere, and Toye (who was mooning over the idea of killing Hitler and being hailed as the patriot of the fucking century when we passed) just to name a familiar few. George, of course, had to have his two cents in as we climbed up to our respective cots; I heard him make a comment pertaining to the stream of conversation and then promptly leave it as soon as he reached his hammock.

He took the lower one and I took the remaining choice. It didn't really matter all that much to me. I just tossed my duffel bag at the foot of the bed, curled up into a ball and listened to the commotion that broke out six cots beneath me. Ground level. Vaguely, I heard George get up to help end the fight that had been started, but I stayed put.

In a few minutes, I had fallen asleep again. The last thought that occurred to me was the stuff nightmares were made of and it wasn't all that surprising as I succumbed to terrible dreams.

I was trapped like a fucking sewer rat. No where to run, no where to hide, no where to take a fucking piss without the fear of being walked in on.

The only escape was sleep. I'd take it gladly.

* * *

_Max…_

It was almost an out of body experience, the feeling of my brow furrowing as the voice reached me from the surface. I ignored it at first, but the next time my name came to me from above, it was followed by an almost painful poke in the ribs.

_Max…_

I slapped at the poker and settled back into my old, lumpy pillow. I hoped whatever it was would go away because I had finally found a pleasant void in which no dreams could find me. I wanted to stay there as long as I could before the restive nightmares returned.

Who knew when _that _would be.

_For fuck's sake, would you wake the fuck up?_

This time I received a slap to the cheek. I gasped, shot up suddenly and my forehead collided with something hard. A hiss of pain collaborated with my own injured groan.

"Fucking _hell."_

Of course it was George fucking Luz. Always causing me pain.

"Serves you right for waking me up like that," I snapped at him, rubbing my forehead furiously.

"I didn't think you'd fucking head butt me!" He whispered sharply in reply. We both rolled our eyes at one another.

I noticed that it was mostly quiet save for a few intermittent snores here and there and the hissing of voices being exchanged in the dim, yellow light. It must have been late; next to _no one _was awake.

My vision stabilized and I saw George sitting next to me. A bluish-red mark was beginning to form on his forehead, where we'd collided; for once, I'd managed to bruise him. "What are you doing up here?"

"What, so I need a reason to visit you now?"

"No, I was just…wondering." I replied.

"You've been kind of…off lately," he clarified. "I thought a little one-on-one time with your old buddy Luz might help remedy that."

"Got a boat ticket home?"

"No."

"Then there's nothing you can do," I replied, sounding almost desolate. "You can't help me, George. It's not even your fault I'm here…it's mine."

He considered this with a contemplative _hmm _and then proceeded to dig through his breast pocket. He took out a pack of smokes, his lighter and a deck of cards. "I'm afraid that _can't _is not in my dictionary. Care for a round of strip poker?"

I paused for a second, searching the lines in his young, mischievous face. "I'm hoping that was a joke?"

"You sure do catch on quickly when you're out of sorts, don't you?" He deadpanned and began shuffling the old, tattered cards into some semblance of order. "How much you wanna bet they're taking us to good ol' England, huh?"

"George, I don't want to go to England."

"I'm sure England doesn't want you there either," George replied.

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

"George…"

"All right, all right," he sighed. "I get it. You're being serious. What do you want me to do? Throw you overboard?"

For a moment, I contemplated this idea. He realized what I was thinking and scoffed. "No fucking way is that happening. I can imagine it now, explaining to your mother why it is that you came home in a casket." He cleared his throat and then proceeded, in a perfect rendition of my mother's voice, to depict the future conversation, "_George Luz, you fucking imp, what have you done? I've put up with you as long as I could but this is just off the charts mister! Now you bend over and I'm gonna spank your little bottom for causing the death of my only daughter. Then I'm going to tie you up to the bed with my husbands tie because I do love a little kink and have my dirty little way with you…you dirty little imp of a boy-"_

"You know, this is my mother you're impersonating, not the five cent whore on the corner across from Barry's," I interjected, scowling at the mental image he'd shoved into my unsuspecting brain. "I know they sort of look alike, but you'd think you'd be able to tell the difference after having to deal with her big fat fucking mouth for most of your life."

He smirked and began dealing out the smokes and cards. "How could I forget such a beautiful sound?" He chuckled, then added, almost in earnest, "but must you always crush my hopes and dreams?"

"This is just one dream I don't want to know about, George," I replied as I lit the end of my cigarette.

We both froze as the sound of someone climbing up the cots interrupted our banter. At first, we'd both ignored it as it could've just been someone coming back from a shit or a walk on the deck, but as it neared George's hammock underneath mine, we both exchanged curious looks and watched, petrified on the spot, as the person neared us.

"Who the fuck is coming up here at this time of night?" I whispered to George.

He tossed me a comically ignorant look and we both turned our attention to the edge of the hammock as Gene Roe's unmistakable blue-black hair and dark eyes met our line of sight.

"Holy fuck that was _close,_" George breathed a sigh of relief.

"What are you doing up here?" I asked.

"Any room for a third player?" He motioned toward the cards.

"Hold on, just a second there," George cut in. "You…want to play cards…with us? What, is the world fucking ending Doc?"

"Couldn't sleep…I heard you guys up here and figured a game of cards might be nice." He replied.

"Sure, Gene, come on in," I said, scooting closer to George, who began gathering the deck for another shuffle. "Park that caboose right here next to me."

He smiled and did as he was told. We all lit up cigarettes, almost simultaneously, as George rearranged the cards again.

It was as we sat there, nursing smokes and listening to the near-perfect quiet that filled up the sleeping quarters to its brim, that Gene held out his unwrapped chocolate rations and offered me a piece…

"Here," he said, his voice a gentle croon. "Eat this. It'll make you feel better."

And I realized suddenly the real reason he was there.

* * *

A/N: Holy crow on a stick! Longest chapter yet at 9k words. Aren't I just a fricken slave-driver? I guess I don't make much sense at 5 in the morning, but hey...I'm just glad I got this done. It took me a few days to finish it because I kept getting interrupted by school and family and shit like that so...hallelujah I'm done! Now, for you history buffs, I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that they were stationed in some other camp before they were shipped to Aldbourne, but I'm going by what the series showed us, as this is based on the series and not the real men of Easy, so don't get your panties in a wad over my artistic license. Also, I'm pretty sure I got the time it took to get from NC to Brooklyn wrong...if I am wrong, please feel free to correct me! :D

**BTW - **The Bobbsey twins...don't ask me...just look them up! You'll get the joke once you read about them a little bit. Bahaha! ;)

Anyway, enjoy! Reviews will be received with much joy and joyness mauahja! I love feedback so let me know what you guys think.

OH, and be warned...the next chapter will be very explicit so if you don't like explicit stuff and don't want your eyes to bleed and melt out of their sockets, I suggest skipping chapter 5. Other than that, all is well. toodles!

disclaimer - I want Rick Gomez's George Luz for Christmas. Sadly, he belongs to Spielberg, Ambrose and Hanks. Lucky bastards. -grumbles in corner-


	5. How the Puzzle Pieces Fit

It felt like a hundred years had passed.

But it had only been one.

The power of persuasion was a tricky influence when it came to these kinds of things. It turned good, sane men into raging lunatics. It turned the softness of contentment and ease into the harsh callus of despair.

It'd certainly had its way with me. The last time I fucking let reality get his hands anywhere near my fatigues and that was for goddamn certain. In a matter of twelve months, something had changed. The first sign had been on the ship to Aldbourne. After that, the effects seemed to dwindle as I became accustomed to the green landscape and the relatively nice barracks and doing PT in the rain.

George was a constant source of comfort. He'd helped soothe some of the initial fear and uncertainty which plagued my every step and, after a while, I became as good as new again. It was just like Toccoa and Mackall…the old joke that all the fuckers who designed these miserable places were related cracked a smile on occasion, but the truth was I couldn't be happier for the similarity; it reminded me of home. It purged the nostalgia. I was able to function again and even toss a few wisecracks here and there.

Mostly in honor of Shithead Sobel and his complete lack of competency with a map. Or tactics.

It had been rather funny, actually, the day Sobel's stupidity was broadcasted for the entirety of first platoon to see. Shithead was lost…yet again. Nothing new to us; it was like old hat, clockwork, the usual.

A few of us tossed each other knowing, rather annoyed glances and others threw mental temper tantrums, the only sign of their inner turmoil being a sigh of frustration or a slack posture. I, on the other hand, found it hilarious, as did George. I nudged him and he tossed a wink my way.

I had reached out my hand, in silence, to grab the invisible gesture and put it in my pocket for later. Perconte, the poor guy, watched our demented exchange with some measure of doubt; he was beginning to wonder if we were slowly beginning to wade through the deep end of the insanity pool.

Maybe he was right. Ha ha.

After scratching his head for a few minutes to try and itch out the stupidity (much to our dismay, this method of drawing his idiocy out through his scalp wasn't working out too good), Sobel ordered Luz and Perconte to lead the platoon behind a large shrubbery to wait for his command. We all ran for cover behind the aforementioned, leafy shelter.

It was the common agreement that Sobel was a flaming imbecile who didn't know he was a flaming imbecile. Which was funny because we all knew and even Winters, ever the polite, level-headed one of the group, doubted his abilities.

Nonetheless, Sobel remained blissfully ignorant to his own short-comings. Perconte, the dark-eyed little leprechaun, decided it would be a truly genius idea to shed a little light on the Captain's situation for him.

After all…friends didn't let friends go on thinking they were gods of war. Especially when said friend wasn't a friend at all but a constant supplier of irritation and grief. Especially when he was as dense as the thicket we were standing behind (maybe even denser).

Perconte, once George and I had rounded the corner, hissed at him. _Luz! Can you do Major Horton?_

George snorted. They should've all known by now that the man was a master of imitation. Nonetheless, he humored his boys with an example of his perfect mastery. _Does a wild bear crap in the woods son?_

Laughter bubbled up all around us. Perconte was entirely convinced. _Maybe the good Major can goose this schmuck? Get us movin'?_

George balked at the idea. He shook his head, muttering no, no, over and over again, but they tempted him. They were all enablers of his iniquity and they all knew it. Hell, even _I _joined in on their demands.

_C'mon, Luz. I'll give you my whole pack of smokes if you can pass off as Horton and make an ass out this fuckhead._

George's lips curled into an elusive, impious smile. _All right…just this once._

We all dipped into a crouching position in a chorus of _fuck yeah's _as our hero remained standing. He shushed us and cleared his voice. Meanwhile, I listened carefully, biting my lips to hide a snicker, and stayed low next to George's pant leg.

_Is there a problem Captain Sobel?_

_Who said that? Who broke silence!_

We couldn't hear the murmurs that followed Sobel's pissy retort. George stayed quiet for a few minutes as we all strained our ears to catch the dribbles of exchange between Tipper, Sobel and Sobel's little lap dog, Evans. Nothing reached us. Someone voiced our unified frustration aloud. _Fuck, what's he saying? _

_What is the goddamn hold-up Mr. Sobel!_

We couldn't take it. Wheezes and sputters erupted from the squatting men as we all tried to hold back the inevitable mirth. Some of us hadn't the strength to handle the hilarity and surrendered to full-out laughter.

George shushed us again and we all listened carefully for Sobel's reply.

_A fence, sir! A barbed-wire fence!_

_Oh that dog just ain't gonna hunt!_

Perconte's laugh escaped him in a close-lipped scoff. George kicked him to shut him up.

_Now you cut that fence and get this goddamn platoon on the move! _

_Yes, sir!_

After that, George Luz was considered a god. Especially when we all heard that Shithead never suspected a thing…not until he was outright told that, at the time he received the order to cut that _goddamn fence, _ Horton had been on leave in London. The night such news reached us was celebrated with smokes all around.

It was the pinnacle. The point where Sobel's authority was being tested by not only his non-coms, his company, but also his superiors, and was found wanting. This frustrated the man to no end and before long we were informed of Winters' impending court marshal.

The news was met with some confusion. _The fuckin' hell is that supposed to mean!_

Okay, a lot of confusion.

_How much you wanna bet it was the whole fence-cutting incident?_

_I'm not jumping with that fuckhead. There's no doubt in my mind he'll get me killed the second we get out in the field. _

_So what do we do?_

This question was not a matter of being annoyed by Sobel's stupidity anymore. It was a matter of life and death. He couldn't read maps, he had no grasp on tactics whatsoever, and was as jumpy as a virgin at a prison rodeo during _training _exercises. What the fuck was he going to be like in actual combat?

We all knew we had to do something or risk dying at the hands of a man that just wasn't cut out for leadership outside of breaking people and making them cry for their mommies. Some were just braver than others when it came down to taking the initiative and getting rid of the sucker themselves.

I stayed out of the mutiny as did George. Bull, Martin, Guarnere and Lipton were just a few of the many who put their lives on the line to flush out their weakest link. One private was transferred out completely; an unfortunate sergeant got busted all the way back to private. But that was the worst of the punishment for their unlawful betrayal.

The reward was the transfer of Sobel, the dismissal of Winters' court marshal and the introduction of a promising new CO. Lieutenant Meehan; a worthy trade if he turned out to be even one step up on the improvement ladder in comparison to Sobel. Even if Meehan turned out to be another schmuck dressed in high ranks and pins of authority, we would be jumping with Winters – a man we knew could handle combat, could lead us well.

Another round of smokes was passed around the night Sobel's transfer became the latest gossip. It was a fucking wonder our lungs weren't reduced to pulpy sacks of tar from all the celebratory chain smoking we did those few weeks of mischief.

And we all owed it to the brave mutineers. To George Luz for being a fucking comical mastermind.

If we couldn't rely on living through this war, then the least we could rely on was having a capable CO to lead us through it.

The next news that reached us wasn't celebrated with smokes. In fact, that night as we lay in our bunks, staring absently at the dark ceiling, not one pack of Lucky Strikes was touched that night.

It was the end of May when we received word that we would be soon moving out of Upottery.

George Luz wasn't quite the same after that.

* * *

The morning of May 31, 1944 was a dreary one. The clouds overhead were thick, black and promised rain and I couldn't help but grumble underneath the current of orders that were flowing free as holy fucking water from the mouth of another one of our new CO's.

Lieutenant Buck Compton. A man whose ability to gamble was as impressive as his good looks and effervescent blue eyes.

_First squad, second row! _

But he wasn't in gambling mode at the moment. He was in an unmistakable get-the-fuck-moving-or-your-ass-will-be-mine mood that left us scrambling to get things done like children under the threat of an ass-thrashing from pa. I could almost see the switch being tapped ominously against Buck's gloved knuckles.

Despite the baby face that could send most girls into a swoon with just a wink and a smile, Buck could certainly turn on the intimidation factor. He laid it on thick until we were all practically smothering from it.

Everyone was dressed in full uniform. Bloused trousers, gloves, rifles slung over tired shoulders, helmets slapped on our heads, complete with a net and motley shreds of dark green material shoved underneath it. It was supposed to give off the impression of camouflage, but mostly I couldn't help but wonder what the poor retired sheet had to do to get the all too literal cut. The only feature that kept us from looking like hardened, kill-you-as-soon-as-look-at-you veteran soldiers were the clean-shaven cheeks and complete absence of dirt from our faces. Even the empty places underneath our fingernails was relatively dirt-free.

Mostly, everyone was in a good mood, if they didn't think about the anxiety that trailed after them, hiding in their shadows. The nervousness came in the form of the debriefing that was scheduled for that afternoon. We all had to settle in before then or have to put off unpacking until later; there was absolutely no way we could miss it. Everything we needed to know about the operation and the jump itself would be packed into a few minutes of an address shouted over the sound of plane engines and typical airbase bustle.

It was just like lectures. Just on a grander scale, pertaining to war and this time it would be given by our CO himself.

I spotted a few familiar faces dressed in Kraut uniforms, complete with German weaponry. I nudged George, who looked up from the ground and nearly dropped his cigarette in his rush to find out what I was pushing him around about.

"The fuck?" I blew a chilled breath of smoke into the thick, gray air. "What, we being invaded or something?"

"They want us to know what the enemy looks like...the ones that we're supposed to be shooting at and blowing up and all the other shit that involves death and war," George replied, stomping the ashy remains of his cigarette into the ground. "You know, so we don't end up putting a bullet in one of our own."

A long pause came to pass in which I simply stared at the sore thumbs of black helmets and black uniforms that walked past. Some of them tipped their hats to us, giving them away as one of our British comrades-in-arms.

George piped up again, fishing for another nicotine stick from his pocket. "Awfully nice of them to spare our consciences, huh?"

I smiled, confiscating the pack from him. "They're a regular bunch of fucking saints, George."

"Why the hell would you do that?" He snapped, trying to retrieve the stolen property. I held it out of his reach, only succeeding in making him angrier, and he nearly climbed on top of me in his desperate attempt to get it back. "Haven't you ever been told that its dangerous to take a bone away from a hungry dog?"

"Who's the dog in this figure of speech, Gee?"

He ripped the pack out of my hand when I wasn't looking. Obviously someone had pissed in his morning coffee. "The President of the fucking United States. Who the hell knows? Take your pick."

"The fuck is your problem?"

"Would you like the entire list or just the abridged version?" He retorted.

I probably could have guessed it myself just by looking at the shadows beneath his sunken-in eyes, the look of pallor that had come over his usually olive-toned skin, and the general brooding expression that made his brow dig deep into his sockets. But it usually helped to talk about things…George needed to talk. I'd listen for the right price.

I stole a smoke from his pack and lit it up. There...I considered myself properly compensated.

"Why don't you hand it to me straight, Gee," I inhaled the nicotine gratefully. "Go whole hog, as Horton would put it."

"Since when did you start calling me Gee?" He asked. By now, he wasn't even bothering covering up his petulance; it was on display for the world to see.

"Since I got too tired and fucking lazy to say George, I guess," I replied. "You gonna talk or what?"

"No," he said, tucking the paper end of his smoke into the corner of his mouth. "I'm fine."

Right. You _sound_ fine.

* * *

The debriefing began at 13:00 hours. Every man in Easy, 1st, 2nd and 3rd platoons, all gathered into one body of smoke and sweat and rain-covered uniforms. I sat down between George and Penkala, both of whom were gravely quiet throughout the entire report.

Mostly our attention was called to an enormous map that was set up on a board behind Lieutenant Meehan as he discussed the operation in its entirety. We would learn every single thing there was to learn about not only our outfit's plans, but every outfit that was involved. Our objective was to take Carentan and destroy the German garrison. Operation Overlord.

They called it H-hour.

D-Day.

I called it holy-fuck-what-the-fuck-did-I-get-myself-into.

One of the privates, Dukemann, stood up and asked when we would be jumping. All we got in response to the question every man was asking behind a mask of nonchalance was rather infuriating in its ambiguity. _We'll let you know._

In the meantime, we were supposed to do our jobs. Study the sand tables, the maps, reconnaissance photos, _everything_ that was involved in the taking of Carentan. We were ordered to leave nothing, not even the smallest detail, out of our examinations.

In war, everything relied on the capability of the man next to you.

I didn't know too much about Penkala yet, but I knew I could rely on George.

We were dismissed. As everyone else stood up, a hand stayed me as I, too, prepared to leave the room. I looked over at George, not a smile line visible on his face, and felt something like paper being slipped into the palm of my hand. Without a sound coming from him save for the rattle of his dog tags crashing together as he moved, he left, disappearing into the sea of deep green uniforms and smoke.

I didn't see him the rest of the afternoon.

* * *

A/N: Edited this. It made me a little uncomfortable. Hopefully y'all don't mind. :)

Aaaaaaanyway. Thanks so much to **BoBlover1, bayumlikedayum and EmmyMK for the reviews! Much appreciateddd. :D**

disclaimer - This is in no way based on the real George Luz. It's based on Rick Gomez's portrayal of him, a fictional portrayal, and I have no intention of disrespecting anyone. This is just fiction. Based on a fictional portrayal of a real man that fought in the war. BoB and its characters belong to Ambrose, Hanks and Spielberg.**  
**


	6. There Is No Beauty in Falling

_..._

_

* * *

_

_june 6, 1994. D-Day. _

* * *

Oh God.

Oh fuck.

This couldn't happen. It couldn't be true. Not after everything we'd been through. Not after surviving his voice changes and my hormones and the collective humiliation and horror of pimples together. Adolescence just wouldn't have been the same without him. I couldn't imagine time in which George Luz ceased to exist within its ever-changing folds.

How could God _do_ this to me? After all the fucking time I'd wasted the last few days on praying for him to keep George safe?

I'd watched him take a hit.

At least, I was so sure I had. One second we were being thrown around the plane like war-painted ragdolls, groping for purchase on anything that could keep us rooted to one fucking spot, but our fingernails scraped only flat metal….the next I heard was flak that seemed to be raining upward, a world turned upside down like a fiery snowglobe, and a cry of pain from behind me. Where George was supposed to be. The red light switched to green. Before I could even look, turn and bend to help him, I was being pushed by another pair of hands and the bodies that swarmed the aisleway. Centrifugal force intervened and all hopes for my rescue mission flew out the window as I was herded toward the front of the vessel.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going! The exit is _the other _way, Private!" Came an irate voice. From somewhere behind me, it was anyone's guess at this point. I couldn't separate the tone from the explosions and the rickety movements beneath and the dizzy terror that was spreading through me, originating from the tips of my toes.

Sound off for equipment check.

Down the line of twelve, only ten reached the front of the craft. We were told if we didn't get out in the next few seconds, we might not get out at all. That was reassuring, especially to one who battled with the mind-numbing realization that her (_his, _Maxine, _his...you're no girl anymore. not here you ain't.)_ best fucking friend might be lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood and spilt guts. I'd promised him last night, in the middle of a hush between us, that I wouldn't let him go if it came down to death...to the act of dying itself. And if he had to go, I'd be there, holding his hand, pushing through tears and nausea and despeartion...to say goodbye.

No fond farewells. No pale, cold fingers wrapped within the confines of flesh and fingers that wanted nothing more but to strangle the fuck out of whoever was in charge of deciding who would live and who would die. Another moment passed. I was ready to bargain…money, promises, _souls. Another precious life was on the line here! Haven't enough died tonight? _They could have anything they wanted…just spare him. Please, spare him.

There was no reply. Not a fucking peep from the netherworld and there I was getting ready to jump and leave him quite possibly for forever.

I recalled perfectly the feeling of tears springing forth from the fertile soil of doubt as the thought caught me in its bewildering snare. I didn't even know if he was okay, if the medic that had boarded with us reached him in time. I felt completely _numb. _As if my body was there, but somehow I was standing over it, watching from a safe distance. I couldn't even hear the bustle of chaos and war around me.

"Fuck, Private, move your feet the _fuck _forward before I shove my bayonet up your ass and _make _you!"

I could've thanked Lieutenant Welsh for his rather harsh support, whose rough, raspy intonation was hard to mistake even in the dark and surrounded by anti-aircraft fire, but I couldn't find the right words. Realizing I was rooted to the spot, whether out of fear or simple shock I knew he couldn't tell, he was true to his word. He stuck me on the cheek, but not with a bayonet…just with his fingers. And a hell of a pinch.

I nearly bounded out of the open frame, but caught the metal partition before falling headfirst into nothing but smoke-filled air. My eyes widened as they took in the sight of the free-fall that was to come.

_GO! GO! GO!_

The Lieutenant offered one last pinch of support and I took the plunge. Breath held, toes tingling from lack of oxygen and my head spinning from a potent mixture of fear and grief, I took one step into the void.

GO NOW, PRIVATE, _GO_!

And then another.

And for a few heart-stopping seconds, I was doing what no human being was meant to do – flying. An indescribable, but familiar feeling that, if I weren't being shot at by fucking Krauts, might have been a little less terrifying. As I hit the ground, my knees scraping solid earth that was hidden beneath the underbrush, I made a mental note to check my skivvies once I retained the ability to feel anything but the adrenaline rushing like poison throughout my entire system.

I stayed low as I removed the chute and the locked-and-loaded Carbine from my shoulder. A second was spared to take in my surroundings. On my left was the open clearing in which the paratroopers were being dropped; on my right, a few running leaps away, was good old foresty cover that was peppered with German 88's and Kraut infantry that was just _dying _to make my acquaintance. The artillery was even louder from my standpoint, concealed behind the bushes as they tore the planes right out of the fabric of the sky. Fucking _cowards. _I had a right mind to go find one and give him a nice knuckle sandwich for his troubles.

But the mentally unstable part of my brain wanted to either find George's killer and force on him a slow, torturous_ (completely absent-of-gore)_ death or find George himself. Considering that the mere sight of blood made me queasy, not to mention being completely surrounded by it, I opted for the latter choice.

A twig snapped somewhere near me. "Flash!" I frantically searched the open field.

"Thunder!" came the reply. I calmed a little as a small-statured figure came sneaking toward me. "'Ey, Max! It's not safe out here…take cover!"

"How polite of you to point that out for me, Perc! I hadn't noticed at first!" I whispered sharply as the familiar dark skin of Frank Perconte emerged from the inky black shadows. It was still impossibly fucking dark, but I could make out his features well enough to know it was him. "However, the second an unrelenting fucking base of fucking fire came heading straight for me, I think I got that I was standing in harm's way without your unnecessary fucking reminder!"

"Don't give me shit!" He retorted harshly. "Orders are to lose the chute and find the rest of Easy!"

"I plan on it, Frank, as soon as I find George!"

"But Max-"

"You're not my CO, Perconte, so if you're not going to be any help to me, then get your scrawny ass the hell out of dodge!" I interjected, my voice rising precariously close what was considered dangerous decibels out here. "You don't need my fucking permission to take a hike!"

Frank was no fucking simpleton. He knew there was no use in attempting to convince me that all was lost. I wasn't ready to give up hope yet that George was okay, if he couldn't be safe. Hell, no one was safe here. The Devil himself, in all his immortal, untouchable glory, couldn't escape being scathed by something walking these death-stained fields – fear, numbness, doubt, the shit sliding down his leg after plummeting thousands of feet through the air with only a silk sheet to stop the inevitable fall below.

The mental note crept back into my head.

Perconte and I both ducked as we heard footsteps coming our way. He held up a fist for quiet and I slapped it down; fuck, I might have been scared out of my mind but I wasn't _stupid. _

"Flash!" Perconte hissed, jumpy as a cat near a tub of water.

"Thunder!"

David Webster filtered through the gold-colored weeds like water through a sieve. Easily. _Graceful _even. He kneeled next to me, looking nearly unrecognizable beneath layers of painted camouflage and the wild sort of look that inhabited his usually very serene, pensive eyes.

"The hell are you guys doing sitting here?"

"We're having a tea party," I replied. "Care to join us?"

"It's a good thing I know how to detect sarcasm or else I would've been hoodwinked there." Webster replied, sinking to a more accessible crouching position.

"Yeah, sure, because that's a word every man uses in the army. _Hoodwinked," _I rolled my eyes, but heaved the frustration with Webster's superiority complex and recalled my cause. "You seen George?"

"No, not since Aldbourne."

"Fuck, you're about as useful as a snot-soaked hankie." I patted him on the shoulder. "Thanks for nothing. Say, why don't you take Perconte here before I shoot him in the fucking leg, huh? Head to rendezvous? His nagging is getting on my last fucking nerve and my finger's starting to itch for that trigger."

Web didn't ask questions. Questions were saved for times when shells weren't raining down on us like metallic rain that fucking _burned _like some bitch when it hit you.

He just took off like a stray bullet, Perconte falling in behind him; the latter looked over his shoulder as they moved through the moonlit weeds, closer to the woodland edge.

He looked frustrated with my stubbornness. "You're a fucking dimwit, Max!"

"So I've heard," I deadpanned. I watched him go as I stayed low in the field. He disappeared completely from my view and I was alone again.

The objective now was to find Easy and wait for orders. For Carentan. Hell, this fact had already registered itself in my brain and I fully intended to find my company. But I wasn't leaving without at least news of George first. No sir…no one was dragging me away from this spot. Not Easy, not death, not even the Devil himself-

"Move your ass, Private Austen!" Lieutenant Welsh's voice came reeling toward me in the form of a furious whisper.

His fingers came in contact with the collar of my uniform and formed into a fist as he proceeded to drag me, in a crouched sort of sneaking posture, into the safety of the trees at the borders where the clearing ended and the forest began.

Well, I supposed that was one way of getting someone to move their ass.

Quite literally with his own hands.

* * *

"Anyone seen George?" I asked frantically, going from man to man as they trailed in from the outskirts of the town, stepping over a makeshift barricade of horse carcasses. Their blood stained the puddles red and the sight of it had made me throw up upon first beholding the gruesome improvisation. Nothing escaped death's ambitious fingers that trickled into the mud and into the soles of our boots.

We sure as hell couldn't escape it. There was not an inch of that place that wasn't stained with blood. I had no stomach acid left to vomit so my stomach just protested the sight with an unrelenting nausea and my throat burned.

Hours had passed since I found my way to the rendezvous point, a dinky ass town in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, without the help of my CO. I'd lost him in the dark after stopping to take a piss and getting lost along the way. Soaked through and covered at least an inch of sludge with my ears still ringing from the heavy artillery being fired off around me in every direction and Lieutenant Welsh's voice going off like a canon at every moment he saw fit to _inspire _me...this of course being before we got separated. I could only hope he was doing a least a little better than I was.

I hadn't seen him all morning, though. A bad sign in this sort of _do-or-die _business. Apparently he'd gone on a special op for Colonel Strayer and that was the last I heard of him.

"George Luz. You seen him?" I asked a passing soldier. He shook his head. "Fuck, come on! You've got eyes, don't you? Are they connected to a brain or is it just a bunch of fuckin' fluff sitting up there!"

"Hey fuck you!" The same man replied. I received an obscene gesture for my troubles. So much for men of honor.

An explosion sounded from somewhere nearby. Far enough to keep our rifles on our backs, but too near to dismiss without a common look of wild fear flaring up in our wide, bulging eyes.

Everyone settled down after a few seconds. A few still looked winded or nervous; I was amongst this nervous bunch.

Perconte, Penkala, Sergeant Martin and Hoobler all snickered behind me from the depths of an abandoned horse stall within the barn we'd taken as shelter from the rain (hell, if it was warm and dry and could be considered shelter, it was useful). I had taken to pacing outside the door. Like an _idiot_.

Perconte's chuckle slid over the length of the toothbrush that was shoved in his mouth, obviously amused as he lounged against the outside wall of the mini barn, his ass parked on against pitted, rotting wood. The men had definitely looked better, but after hours of stumbling through a dark forest and finally arriving here, before me, I couldn't blame their ruffled appearance.

That didn't make me tolerate their amusement over my desperation. Actually, it made me want to fucking throttle them all one by one. With my bare hands. No gloves required. No blood either. I could do without seeing blood for the rest of my life after this.

"Is this your impression of Lipton? Going around, making sure everyone got here all right? With their skivvies and everything?" Perconte threw his head back and they all gave a hearty, unrestrained laugh in unison. I could punch them all in the face…I really could. "It's a good one…I'll give you that."

"Fuck, Frank! I can't…I can't find him. Where could he be? I mean…I-I was just…I was sitting right across from him on the plane…" I dropped my helmet and ran a pair of shaking hands through my knotted hair (were they even mine, those palms, those fingers? or had I lost them along the way?) and scanned the horizon for George.

He was nowhere. Nowhere meant he wasn't coming back. We'd be moving out in a matter of hours, maybe less, I didn't know. I'd seen everyone in Easy…everyone was just fine and dandy as far as I knew. He wasn't anywhere to be found. No news of him, not even a sighting. My heart hammered against my chest, screaming for release. Fuck all hell. _Fuck. _

This was George Luz for _Chrissake_! The boy with a head of hair thicker than his entire body and a laugh stained with boysenberries from Old Man Lagey's flourishing summer farm. He could charm his way out of a swat and make even the most cantankerous old Scrooge laugh at his jokes. He couldn't be gone. He could probably cheat death better than any man here. I told myself over and over again until it felt like song and dance that he was just running late. Stopped off and took a piss or something.

_Mowed down by Krauts. He's lying in a shallow grave somewhere, pale and bleeding and alone. He's calling for you. Can't you hear him Max?_

_And there you have the gall to call yourself his oldest, most trusty friend._

It wasn't my _fucking_ fault! We'd gotten separated...yeah, that was it...separated! There was nothing I could do. Especially with Welsh pracitcally burying his fingers _up _my ass every time I even _looked _like I wanted to go back there.

_Not _my fault...

I cradled my head in my hands as the voice of my conscience broke through the urgent fog. A groan raced up the hollow cavern of my throat with the taste of bile, but I bit it back until my lip bled. The taste of blood only made my head pound harder. I was back to square one in less than a minute. Record time for me.

Perconte appeared at my side with a sigh and offered me cigarette and a light. He must've noticed my all-too-discreet attempts to restrain myself. Remain calm until I had cold, hard evidence that George was alive or dead. Luckily I was so good at it…or else I'd be freaking out by now.

My hands shook violently as I ignited the end of it and drew in a soothing breath of smoke; my wracked, dancing nerves stilled to the slightest degree, but it wasn't enough to tear my unshakable gaze on the horizon. Thick brown hair. Thick brown hair. I said it so much in my head that I almost expected to see it pop up out of the ground somewhere in front of me. Do a little tap dance to Oklahoma! Hah…as if hair could dance. Funny Max..._you're a real nutcase, you know that?_

Perconte's hand rested on my shoulder, and despite the man's tendency to get pissy over the most insignificant things, he was able to calm me somehow. I could almost kiss his dark, adorable little cheek but…that would have been too awkward underneath my pretense to explain at the moment. I was in no shape to be handling awkward. They might as well send me to the loony bin in a nice new jacket to match my new digs if I had to handle anymore _shit _in the next few minutes.

If George didn't show up soon, a trip to the nut house would be manifest destiny. It'd be written in the great book and passed on for transcription into reality. A one way ticket out of hell.

"That's it. Take deep breaths," he said, giving me a light squeeze. I looked up into his face; he was as concealed under a thick layer of shit as I was. Better shit than blood. "You know, Max, that's the first time you called me Frank. Come sit inside and I'll keep an eye out for Luz for a while."

"Yeah? Would you?" I asked., looking up at him with a sheepish grin. A smile. Of the companionable, _sure, why not?_ sort. For a moment, my muscles relaxed. Sanity returned, gave a cautious sniff, and tiptoed over the limits of something like a little town of exhaustion in my head as I headed inside the little one-roomed shelter. Welcome to well-fuck-if-we-weren't-all-fucked-ville. A place where smelling like sweaty, three-day-old shit, eating moldy bread and being so completely drained of our ability to move that we were ready to sleep on a pile of dead Krauts (sans me, of course...no way in Hell was I touching a dead body) was a normal day in paradise. At least it sounded logical in my head...since when did anything reasonable come of my thought process?

I swung my free arm from side to side as I scrutinized every single uniform that passed the window. No, not there. I looked to my right. Not there.

"Would you fucking stop that?" Martin spoke up from the other side of the room. "Hell, you're making me nervous."

"Sorry, Sarge," I replied absently, still watching the passers-by. Nope, nope..._double _nope.

It was kind of like playing a sort of homemade guessing game. I spy the Luz. Ten points for finding him underneath his war-paint with no help other than basic female instinct. Only five if you have to hear him speak first.

No sign of him. Not a trace of his thick brown hair or that big, goofy grin that reached into his big, doe eyes (because apparently every one of George's features was overly exaggerated and deer-like at the moment). Not even his mischievous giggle could be heard amongst the ones who _had _made it and were sprawled out anywhere and everywhere their asses could manage to sit. Even if it wasn't comfortable, sitting on the cold, hard ground, we were used to discomfort, and a good rest before the companies were rounded up and were moved out again was a priority.

This was getting out of hand.

_George Luz, please report to Private Austen for an all out ass-whooping immediately. Over._

"'Ey, what's his problem?" One of the passing soldiers asked. Apparently seeing my panicked face in the dirty windowpanes as it was brimming over into my appearance had the guy a little spooked and definitely entertained by the unexpected at the same time...as if he'd just seen a dog in a ballerina skirt dancing the Viennese waltz. The thought brought a transient smile to my face. Too bad I'd missed it on its way out the door.

Peconte spit his watery spit in the anonymous, one man peanut gallery's direction. I could almost hear his brow furrowing into a thin, dangerous line, but it would never hold a candle to Liebgott's temper; the boy had the rage monster in him, its ugly head rearing up more often lately as the reality of war hit him head-on and he had no time to become accustomed to its arrival.

Lieb had been too nervous the past few days to really entertain his little red fiend too much. I wondered, idly, where the ol' dirt-mouthed Jew was now. It only added to the growing hysteria...I tried to tell myself I'd seen him smoking with Lipton just a few minutes ago. Smoking required functional lungs for it to work properly. Lipton didn't smoke…what proof of existence did I have for him? He could've been a ghost, a figment of unwinding imagination.

How any of my refutations made sense, I wasn't quite sure. I was grasping for straws by now and grateful as hell for the ones I happened to receive.

Hysteria simmered beneath the surface like a boiling pot. Frantic breaths dribbling slowly, calculating the exact, most timely moment to pounce, down the sides of my self-control.

"His best friend is missing. Give him a goddamned break!" Frank retorted coolly at the soldier's back, his toothbrush hanging out of the side of his mouth as if it wished it were a cigarette. "They haven't been separated since goddamned birth…is that all right with you?"

An unfamiliar voice entered, uninvited, into the conversation. It was muffled by the walls of the structure so that I could barely hear it. "Is that Austen with you, oh Tooth Fairy-Frank?"

I started violently at the familiar, lilted sound of my surname falling from human lips. My smoke dangled precariously over the downcast edges of my mouth as I searched for the origin, but couldn't seem to find the body to match the voice.

"Yeah?" Perconte replied, chuckling in response. "What's it to you?"

The two paused at each other's side. Perconte whispered something, smiling, into the stranger's ear. A nod and an indistinct grin in return on a shapeless face.

Anonymous Trooper graced us with his reply as he moved past Perconte to stand in the doorway of the small, derelict barn. The light from outside against his back made his features impossible to see. "You're looking for a jolly old Luz?"

I was utterly confused and communicated said lack of understanding with a scowl directed first at Hoob, Martin and Penkala, but then, as they seemed confused as well by the sudden apparition, I looked at the doorway obstruction for answers.

The man came walking inside, no longer shrouded by the sunlight. Short, waterlogged and covered from head to toe in crusted-over muck (the latest fashion, apparently, amongst paratroopers), he was dragging himself into the spotlight of our small gathering, smack dab in the middle of the barn, on bone-tired legs.

The cigarette was dropped to the damp, wood floorboards as my mouth fell open. It was immediately forgotten as the figure neared us, almost recognizable. "_George_?"

"Did you miss me old buddy?" came his teasing reply.

Oh hell, that was _most _certainly George. There was no mistaking his voice, when it wasn't imitating random strangers, for anything in the world.

I tried my hardest to keep male composure. I really did. However, months of repressing my female tendencies (a pathetically quaint collection all things considered, but they were still there) and days of emotional turmoil and dread were working against me. I _bounded _the short distance toward him. Ran, skipped, jumped…whatever humanly possible pace my feet could manage underneath so much weight and exhaustion.

There he was. George Luz. Alive, breathing (he and I both could use a good brush, but hey, it was warm and not his last!) and just as fucking endearingly annoying as he always was. The sigh of relief I'd been holding since the drop was released. My eyes scanned his person for any blood that was his or bruises that might have looked detrimental to his survival. What was I fucking thinking? He was all right. He'd live.

Apparently my mouth hadn't gotten the memo. "Are you all right?" I asked, keeping my voice low. I had to drown the urge to throw my arms around his neck and never let go in a terribly executed masculine display. "You're not hurt? No broken bones? Bruises? Mortal wounds? Cuts? Scrapes? Hell, did you get diaper rash on your way down, cause fuck I'm so happy to see you that I'll be the first to put some fucking anti-itch cream on it if that's all you wanted from me in return!"

"This is you after a few hours of separation? Hell, I should desert you more often in the middle of nowhere," he chuckled, then, in Colonel Sink's voice, declared, "I'm fine as frog hair, boy! Not an ass-itchin' in sight!"

"Good," I replied, the anger of his desertion starting to boil over. "Cause you're going to be hurting real good in a second you _fuckwad."_

He barely had enough time for the _what the fuck? _look on his face to take full form before I offered him an explanation.

My hand been clenching, tight as a spring, throughout the entire reunion. And while he'd been smiling away, happy as a little lark and completely oblivious to the terror he'd put me through for the last _miserable _twenty four hours of my life, I'd been preparing my revenge. Fist wound, body coiled, I was ready to give him the best fucking welcome back party he'd ever had. In _knuckle_ form.

I punched him square in the face as hard as I _fucking_ could. Every bone in that hand rattled and the recoil sent me nearly reeling from the force of it. There wasn't a bone in my body that had been built for hand-to-hand combat and the truth of this fact was certainly not lost in the execution of the hit itself. It was sloppy, laughably weak in comparison to a slug from a guy even half Bull Randleman's size, and it probably hurt me more than I hurt him.

Hell if it didn't hurt like a son of a _bitch, _but it was worth the pain. Worth every second of it. Worth hearing him in some kind of discomfort that didn't even scrape the surface of the the kind I'd been wallowing in, a little selfishly, since we descended from the sky. Dodging bullets, dodging fire, dodging things that exploded around us like fireworks on the fourth of July. It just wasn't good for a mind already teetering over the edge. I could only take so much. I was unraveling already, an uneasy revelation, and our part in the war had only just begun.

Perconte had come inside at the first sign of a ruckus, slamming the old door behind him, and held me back as George struggled to recover from the blow, not from the pain, but because he hadn't expected it. He was gasping as he tried to make sense of the attack, but couldn't seem to get a good grip on the reality of what had just happened.

With his hand plastered to his battered cheek, George's mouth went slack with bewilderment. "What in the flying _fuck_ was that for?"

"Max," Martin's measured voice came from behind me. His firm grip kept me from lunging at my friend again and if he weren't so strong I probably would have been able to wiggle free. I was seeing _red. _"Max, you're tired. Your head's not on straight. You need to take it easy. "

"With all due respect, Sarge, how could you _possibly _know how I'm feeling right now?" I seethed, ripping my arm nearly out of its socket to escape his crushing grip and he was taken aback by my forcefulness. It was less comical than usual. Not a hint of mockery in its approach and certainly more selfish, more thoughtless.

Of course he _knew _how I felt. The sensation of being far away from someone he loved rested in the memories he kept close for comfort's sake - of his wife, whom he'd left back home, the woman he might possibly never see again. The one he only ever heard from in letters, written words, not the sound of her voice in his ear or the warmth of her tiny, delicate hand pressed against his heart.

The anger had been converted to fit into the form of panic. I was pretty sure he didn't know how to handle the sudden swing in personality, so he didn't try to refute my claim. He just sunk back and muttered to Penkala to fetch Welsh. The randomly selected trooper took off through the bustle of the town.

I was reverting back to my undiscovered female persona, a girl who had been bottled up for years and was now showing her emotional strength in the waves of terror that began to break over me, dragging me under in rip-tides and strong currents. She'd been there the night in the hotel room, after the debriefing with Meehan...and here she was now. Right where I didn't _fucking _want her to be. I couldn't keep my head above water; _this ship was sinking fast._

Who the fuck cared? I didn't. I didn't care if all _three _of them found me out at the moment as I was too pissed off to be concerned with masquerades that meant nothing compared to the death of a loved one. A best friend.

I turned back to Luz in the wake of Martin's bewilderment. Not George, not Gee, not old fucking pal of mine that I loved so dearly. No, just Luz. Because Luz was the bad guy and I needed to take my frustration out on the closest victim. _He _had scared the shit out of me. I thought he was _dead. _But there he was, like he'd been resurrected just to save my pathetic sanity from the edge of destruction.

"And you!" I pointed at him. He stared, cross-eyed, at my finger. "You son of a bitch! Don't you _ever _do that to me again, do you _hear _me? You fucking _prick_! I've been sitting here all morning wondering what the fuck happened to your ass! I thought you'd been shot, maimed, _dismembered - hell you take your fucking pick! _You had me sick with worry you _shit_head!"

The storm clouds of a skirmish began to form around us on Perconte, Martin and Hooblers' dark, dirty faces.

"Calm down!" Perconte hissed from behind me. The voice of reason. It seemed ironic, the obsessive tooth-brusher telling me to be fucking calm. He had no fucking _right._ Ha ha, what a big _fucking _joke. "You're make a big fucking scene over nothing! He's here, he's alive! That's what you've been wanting all morning! _Fuck_! What the hell is the _matter _with you, huh?"

My resolve was shattered, the pieces scattered in the dust, waiting to be picked up and reassembled to fit the image of its original form, but they would never be the same. The skeleton would call upon the power of familiarity to breathe life into the creature, but the intent would be lost. Where it went, I didn't know. Home, probably, where it felt safe and warm and never went _hungry _or waded through blood and death on no sleep just to kill, maim, destroy everything it touched. This was the feeling of every man involved in the war. It was the truth that cut too deep for them to even bleed, to draw out the poison, and they were forced to let it fester until there was nothing left to decompose. Walking dead. Destined to die in battle or walk away, but not without the scars of who they'd been and who they'd be when they were freed from this Hell.

None of us would ever be the same. My voice of reason was the first to undergo alterations.

Because the fact that George had been searching frantically for the rendezvous point longer than I had, was more tired and as equally frightened as I was - this was all lost on me. It never occurred to me, not once during that time, that this not only _might _be so, but most certainly, without a doubt in any man's mind that was present to hear my lunatic ranting and raving, _was the case. _

This was absurdity in its purest form - desperation.

I didn't care if I was surrounded by a bunch of questions, all of which were asking what the hell was going on with me. I'd been just fuckin' _fine _five minutes ago. _Ten _seconds ago had found me perfectly normal in their eyes. Something had burst at its seams and I needed release or I would fall apart. Not even Gene could put me back together after that final step was taken.

I could tell it to them straight, all three of them at _once, _what was wrong with me. I was scared and tired and I didn't belong here and I just wanted to go home. That I was a woman and had no place here, that I didn't belong here, even less than they did. Fuck, none of them belonged here. They belonged on farms or behind counters and lawnmowers with calluses chafing against their gloves as they worked to go to college or to keep their wife in the lap of comfort. Fell asleep over cracked open books that were never read because they'd stayed out too late with their girls or their wives again, laughing over buckets of popcorn and feverish, open-mouthed kisses that tasted like butter and flowery perfume.

They all belonged home. Growing up and growing old and not an arm's fucking reach of this goddamn war.

_I just wanted to go home._

Footsteps came charging toward us. Two pairs. Two men.

It took me a minute to realize I was crying. Snot was rolling out of my nostrils in thick unattractive gobs so fast that even sniffling couldn't stop the flow. My hands reached instinctively for my face, now soaked in salt and sweat and dirt and tears, and as I pulled them back thick spindles of saliva were left behind. Like a web of mucus.

"George, I thought you were dead." There was no use for inside voices in the throes of hell-hath-no type fury, but even in the midst of a breakdown I knew better than to not shout. "I thought we were all dead. All those…all those fucking _bullets _coming straight for us and we couldn't do anything but sit there and wait and wait and _wait to die_! We couldn't even try to shoot back, defend ourselves, because we were stuck in a fucking _airplane!" _

I was being stupid. After this, I'd have to gain their respect back. My pride. But at the moment it was all I was capable doing. It was a discouragement, to say the least, to realize the true depths of my weakness. That I wasn't cut out for war and I hadn't even killed my first Kraut yet or gotten woozy at the first sight of bloodshed. There was always the possibility that I was drawing attention that may or may not have been bad for the entire company and I was putting them in the line of fire just because I couldn't control my shaking, my emotions, the words coming out of my mouth.

"And then…then you weren't there! You were…you were shot in the plane and the medic, he tried to stop the bleeding…God, I had hoped that I'd been wrong and I looked for as long as I could but…but I-"

"Max,-" He swallowed thickly, interrupting my pointless rambling. His eyes darted from side to side_. They're all going to know_, he was trying to tell me, _there won't be a doubt in their minds that you're a girl if you don't stop fucking shouting at me like a nagging fucking housewife!_

But I had missed their entreaty. "And then…and then I…I-I was scared that you were gone for good.…" I trailed off, panting, and anger took the reins again, and suddenly I wasn't talking about the here and now anymore. "What the _fuck_ were you thinking, huh? I don't fucking get it! It doesn't make any fucking sense! You stupid prick! Don't you think you and I have gotten in enough trouble back home to last the rest of our fucking lives without adding this shit to the pile? Without having to worry about your sorry ass being caught in the line of fucking fire? Fuck you, George! _Fuck you! _I _hate _you, you sorry excuse for an asswipe, I hate your _fucking_ guts! It's _your _fault we're here! It's all your fucking fault and I will never forgive you for this. Do you _hear _me? **_I will never, ever forgive you George Luz!_** "

I lunged for him again and only got as far as slamming my fists against his chest, trying to draw out the reservoir of sense in him for myself, before I was pulled away by another pair of hands. No sooner had the newcomer taken one good look at me did they order Penkala to fetch a medic and to do so _discreetly_. The boy was out of there faster than a bat out of hell.

"Hey, kid, what's the matter with you, huh? What the hell is going on here?" came the commanding, raspy voice of Lieutenant Welsh. The same Welsh who'd stuck me reapeatedly in the ass to get me out of the plane. His hold was as kind as it could possibly be, considering the rather coarse-mannered man behind it.

Gentleness wasn't working. He grew impatient with my complete lack of regard for the safety of my company and his voice rose up over my incessant struggling. "Private, get a goddamn _hold_ of yourself! Now look at me...I said look at me, kid!"

George just stared; his mouth hanging open, his eyes softened by astonishment, all he could do was just stand there and try to figure out what he'd done wrong. Even Perconte was as silent as a fucking mouse. No one said a thing…they just watched me as I began to break.

"You're all right, Private," Lieutenant Welsh told me softly. "It's good to vent. Just not on the other boys, okay? All right, let it _all _out. There you go."

I couldn't resist the temptation. It might have been against regulation, but at the moment I couldn't even remember how to load a gun, much less policy. I breached the separation of rank between us and, still sobbing, turned to the ruffled blond fellow behind me and collapsed into my CO's thin chest.

If I had been in my right mind, I would have realized I was getting snot and tears and spit all over my commanding officer's uniform .That he was probably looking at everyone around him, asking, silently, what to do. Even George didn't budge from the spot he was rooted in, his hand still flat against his face. Everything seemed frozen. Nothing would move.

"It's all right," Welsh's voice soothed me from above. The reassuring pats on my back were awkward, but they meant well. "Calm down, Austen. Calm down."

"I'm real sorry, sir," I sniffled, still weeping bitterly, wiping my running nose on my sleeve. "I got snot all over your uniform, sir."

"It's okay, don't worry about it. It comes right off," he replied softly with a hint of a smile in his voice, probably trying not to think too much about it. Footsteps and a deep Cajun drawl. A sigh of relief from the CO.

Welsh was relieved from his position as caretaker and I was passed into Gene's capable hands. "Why don't you sit down with Doc here, have something to eat, maybe a smoke, and try to calm down a little bit while we wait for the rest of the guys come in. Your platoon leader will announce when it's time to head out."

I let him go and Gene began speaking to me in soft, soothing murmurs. The little prayers he saved for the broken, the lost, the scared. He found the one that suited me best, and it came and sheltered me as he moved me over to one of the stalls. The rest of the guys moved out; only one pair of boots remained fixed to their spot. George had stayed behind.

My legs were too weak to hold me up. I slid down the wall, shaking violently as I fixed my eyes on the red cross that looked like stark red blood against his arm. All of the sudden, throwing up sounded _so _nice.

"You'll be okay, Maximillian. Everything's all right. Take deep breaths…nice and easy, nice and easy…not too fast now. Inhale, exhale. That's it…just like that," he crooned gently, repeating the words over and over. He breathed in with me and exhaled. It wasn't long until I was composed again.

As soon as I was breathing normally again, he buried his hands into his pack for something. Vaguely, in the back of my head, I realized someone as close to insanity as I had been would still be close to hyperventilating by now. It should've taken longer for me to settle down.

But Gene made anything possible. He was a regular angel with only a red-cross armband and quiet suffering to prove he was human…if only skin-deep.

Rustling could be heard, even from my far proximity, as he buried his hands in his back, obviously looking for something important. At least it seemed far. Still out of sorts, I barely felt the canteen around my neck move as he shook it. No water. I'd downed the last of it before dawn and had been too panicked over finding George to refill it. He cursed softly and lifted his own from around his neck. The cap came off and the opening was pressed to my wilted lips.

"You're dehydrated." He exhaled through his nostrils and they flared a little. "And paired with an empty canteen, well...you've got yourself a bad combination."

My voice was far away, but the rusty cogs of my brain were beginning to move. "Was that a joke, Gene?" I asked hoarsely. He cracked a fleeting smile, but said nothing in return, only tipped the canteen so that the water filled my mouth and I was tipping my head back, greedy to get as much as I can, within a few seconds.

"Not too much or you'll cramp up," he warned. I obeyed and let go; he took it back.

Another pair of footsteps approached. My eyes were closed; they sounded like George's, but I couldn't be sure in the middle of this fucking mess.

"Nuh uh, George," Gene told the intruder. "No visits for now. The only company he needs right now are rest, quiet and calm."

George ignored him. "How's he doin'?"

"Severe panic attack. He'll be fine, though. I'll keep an eye on him for the next few days, make sure he doesn't need to be sent back to England," the medic replied. My heart fluttered nervously at the sound of Aldbourne being mentioned. And leave George and Gene and Lieb and the rest of the boys to fend for themselves?

No fucking way was that happening.

The sound of something breaking rattled the stale air and the quiet medic took my hand. Pushed something hard and cold into my palm. "You eat this now, all right?"

I opened my eyes and groaned inwardly. "Fucking chocolate? I'm so tired of this shit…I'd rather eat cow pies."

"That can be arranged," George quipped. "There's a field full of grazing heifers nearby."

"No jokes, Luz. I mean it…his mind needs a rest or it's headin' for a nasty break." Gene warned. He took his job quite seriously. Curing people was his territory and he guarded it like a mild-mannered, well-meaning junkyard dog.

George, in turn, defiantly stole a piece of untouched chocolate from my hands."Just humor me and let me sit here, would you Florence Nightengale? I promise to be a _good_ boy."

He didn't refuse George's rather impolitely delivered request and I smiled as my friend plopped down and sighed, his eyes closing in vast contentment, his relief in being able to sit down for the first time since the jump most likely.

Gene balked silently, his lips pursing so tightly that it looked as if someone had stuck a lemon in his mouth. He was trying his best not to lose it and George was just being so frustratingly invasive…it was a hard feat. I had to respect the man for keeping his cool for so long.

"That's no way to talk to a medic, George," I scolded him. "Look at what he's done for us already. Dug splinters out of both our fingers. Nursed you back to health that one time you got a serious case of the shits, remember? Not to mention those pills before we jumped so we wouldn't get sick on the plane. Besides, he holds your _life _in his hands. If you go down, this is the man that will be saving you. I wouldn't recommend pissing off the man with the morphine. So you shut up and be a good boy or I'll let Gene here whoop your ass."

The Cajun smiled into his shirt collar, adorably bashful and red-cheeked as always. I could _kiss _him for successfully bringing me back from the brink.

"Sorry, mother. Didn't know you decided to come along, slap on a chute, jump out of a fucking airplane, get shot at and brave all this _shit_ just to fulfill your daily need to nag me to death." He put the half-eaten morsel back where he'd gotten from.

"I take it you're feeling better then?" Gene interrupted. I smiled and nodded in return. "Good. No moving for a good ten minutes, you hear? Let your mind and your body recuperate."

That was all the answer he needed and he patted my knee before rising elegantly from his spot, casting me a gentle look and stepping out into the light again.

"Is it just me or does it seem like you actually _enjoy _making everyone's job harder?"

"I could ask the same of you," He retorted and snuggled comfortably into the medic's old spot across from me. Our knees brushed. "The boys want me to tell you how it all goes. Should I tell them you've gone batshit?"

"I'm sure they already know. It's not exactly headlining news."

An oafish guffaw escaped him. He suddenly lunged forward. "You gonna eat this?"

"I was thinking about it, yeah," I replied. I watched him steal the chocolate he'd just given back to me in front of Gene.

"Thinking gets you nowhere," he said, smacking his lips loudly together as he chewed. "You snooze you lose my friend."

"Don't you have your own?"

"Didn't anyone ever tell you that stolen chocolate is the _best_ chocolate?" He snorted a little. "You have a lot to learn about the male persuasion, oh naïve little flower. We always want what we can't have and don't want what we've already got."

"So that explains you joining the Airborne," I remarked. I'd let that _naïve little flower _comment slide for once since I was so fucking happy to see him. I was glad to leave the exhausting initial feeling of relief, then the transition into anger, behind and settle for a more relaxing contentment with having him sitting with me, eating stolen chocolate and looking dirty as a runty piglet dressed in a mud suit.

He raised his arms over his head and gasped, mocking exasperation. "Someone give the boy a prize!"

A hush settled over us in thick, tranquil tufts. The only sound that could be heard was the murmur of voices surrounding us and the obnoxious sound of George eating with his mouth open. Ever the mannerly gentleman. I guessed having breasts accounted for nothing around him….not even a little gender-compliant etiquette.

Well, this was war. Not a dinner party. Although…the latter sounded rather nice at the moment.

George regarded my gathered brow and the downward, thoughtful cast of my mouth as anger. "Well, aren't you hot one second and cold as a dead fish in Antarctica the next?"

I snapped back to attention, but it took a second for my eyes to regain full focus and return to his. "Beautiful analogy, George," I snorted. "Really. Nearly brought me to tears."

He ignored me; there was obviously some self-assigned mission for him to carry out before he freed me of his bare-edged scrutiny. "If I didn't know you any better I'd think you were avoiding my question."

Silence.

"What...you still feeling ass-fucked about me deserting you?"

"Would you like to clarify what the hell that even _means_?"

"Ashamed...frustrated...afraid...hormonally unbalanced," He brandished his hands and they filled the small amount of space between us, tools of his accentuation. The show ended with an innocent little shrug and a curtain call, the encore. "You know...ass-fucked."

This was as good an explanation I was going to get, so I took it gratefully. "I just...didn't like feeling that way, George. You're the only piece of home I have left...the one person I rely on for everything around here..."

"So what does that make Doc?" He quipped. "Chopped liver a la medic?"

"I can take care of myself." I growled.

"Whoa! Wait just a fuckin' second! Do you detect a foul scent on the air?" He looked around as if in earnest, searching for the source of the phantom scent. He wrinkled his nose as he sniffed the air and his were lips pursed in disgust. Obviously he was being sarcastic. "Fuck a duck! Sure smells a lot like bullshit all of the sudden around here."

"George...you know Bull doesn't have the heart to shit where we sleep! His adoration for his rag-tag team of misfits rises above such nefarious acts of cruelty. He doesn't have the capacity in his heart for such vicious behavior," the man himself walked by. Opportunity walked by dressed in a uniform, the image complete with a smoking cigar. "Isn't that right, Sergeant?"

Bull didn't even look at me as he walked right on past the archway we were currently occupying. "Whatever helps you sleep better at night, Max," was his indifferent reply.

George giggled and pointed to the fleeing figure. "Now that's some funny shit!"

His shit-eating grin was insufferable, if not infectious, and I kicked him in the shin in a fool-hardy endeavor to wipe it off his face. Bad move. I received a small _thump _to the forehead as the remaining morsel of chocolate he'd been eating came in contact with my unsuspecting noggin in retaliation.

We might have been over the age of eighteen and paratroopers in the Airborne Infantry, but goddamn if we weren't still just bratty kids behind the uniform and underneath all the misleading layers of age.

Time was just a big fucking joke after all.

* * *

I couldn't remember an instance in which I'd been so tired. Not in the entirety of my pathetically short lifespan.

Did you hear that up there, o almighty deity? Too short. Pathetic. Two negative words that, when put together, formed a double negative. Can you take a hint or should I send a letter of correspondence indicating my official request for an extension on my life span? Everything's sorta blurry right now as to how long it's going to last. _Please and thank you your royal namelessness, love Maxine._

The long and short of it basically lead to the same conclusion that I was more than a little fatigued. It was brain-crushing, feet-killing, muscle-destroying weariness. And we all felt it equally...like sharing a nice little cold that had been passed around as an early Christmas gift. But much, _much _worse.

An hour of rest before heading out again. It was all that could be afforded in the rush we were thrown into. Carentan was still not ours (we hadn't even reached it yet) and we'd been in Normandy for at least a day or two. Nothing more was said on how we were getting there, what the plan was after we won or lost the town (that was the intelligence officer's business, not our own) and how long it would be before we had another chance to relax.

We all took advantage of the opportunity, not knowing when the next time to stop and sit for a while would be, and plopped our weary asses down for a nice home-cooked dinner of canned beans mixed with watery hot sauce that Bull had somehow managed to find while scavenging in some dumpsters. Around the fire, smokes were lit up and pushed to the side of motionless lips while we waited for conversation to come to us. Waited to move out on a second's notice.

The group I sat amongst was small, but comfortable, and was made up of Skip, Penkala, Sergeant Randleman, Sergeant Martin, whom I'd apologized to over the fire for snapping at him earlier that afternoon, and of course George, who sat next to me. Martin teasingly threatened to punish me for my smart-mouth, but most of the incident was forgiven on account of mental instability, or so he called it (the remaining bits that were held against me...well, I'd pay for them later). I was never going to live down Lieutenant Nixon's midget comment. I was branded by the damning title forever.

We picked at our food, not really all that hungry as we wanted more than anything to lie down. But we also didn't want to step on any toes and insult Bull (for once, free of that almost archetypal cigar in his mouth), who had been kind enough to make it for us as we all exchanged jokes and teasing blows to our neighbors' sides. Some of the horseplay escalated into miniature wrestling matches, but Martin squashed them quick, and we tried to keep our minds off the long road ahead through other, less _physical _means of diversion.

George always had something to say…especially whenever there were dampened spirits nearby. Whether it was wanted or not, he didn't really care all that much how he was received. Neither did anyone else. He mostly saw it as doing his job…uplifting and nurturing wounded morale while making people laugh to keep from crying. Distraction was key. He was good at his self-appointed position as company comedian…I had to give him at least that.

Too bad he hadn't been around to curb my temper tantrum. My pride was still wounded by the episode, though no one ever mentioned it. At least not to my face.

Gene had walked by a little while after Winters' patrol (_how's Austen doing? _He'd asked, apparently informed of the incident by the only commissioned officer who paid witness to it, and I feigned sleep against George's warm, snuggly shoulder to keep from having to face my superior with my severely damaged pride), much to our surprise, but he had mentioned earlier that he would be looking out for George and I throughout the day. He mentioned that George looked a little parched and he offered the man his canteen once he heard that it was empty, waiting to be filled once he summoned the wherewithal to do so. Always a giver, never a taker. I offered Gene a cigarette and George, the good old boy, provided the light. Together, we would strive to discover a cure for Gene's crippling savior complex.

The Cajun looked dog-tired and a little thirsty himself, but if he was suffering, he sure didn't say so out loud.

At the moment, Gene was probing George's left hand, which he had all only just discovered was covered in blood and completely _filthy. _After a very timid verbal lashing for not taking care of the wound earlier, the only type of instance in which we heard the medic get even the least bit cross with us (and it was rather unassuming in its own maternal way, sort of like Lipton when he was trying to stifle our giggles in the barracks back at camp, but in a much more distant, fearful way), Gene was invited to stay. He saw that he had no choice and Bull offered him a little food to tempt him. The medic accepted in his usual collected sort of way with a mannerly _yes Sarge, thank you _and set to work on the gash that leered up at him like a grinning red demon through human flesh. His cigarette was tucked into the corner of his mouth as he went about his business and faded into the background of the group.

"Well, I am sorry Doc, but I was fresh out of bandages," George sucked a long drag from his own smoke. "Had to use my entire supply on patching up my wounded ego when I landed _on my ass _right in front of a fuckin' Kraut_."_

"You shot the bastard I hope," Martin said of the confession, almost passive.

"Tickled his belly with my bayonet was more like it," George answered, shrugging, but there was something that wasn't quite the same in his eyes. Like a light had gone out or a darkness had crept in and smothered it. The fire reflected off of them and they smoldered in the red-washed glow of the fire. "He was too close for me to take a shot so I pulled the knife on him. Fucker didn't see it comin'."

Gene said nothing in reply to the soldier's sarcastic explanation and gruesome account of the ill-fated German who'd crossed his path. He merely knitted his brow even deeper, pursed his lips, and set to work the rocks out of the torn flesh with a pair of tweezers.

"How'd it feel?" Hoobler asked, the innocence of his tone clashing with the cruelty of the question itself.

"What?" George looked at him, brow raised.

"Killin' a Kraut."

"It didn't feel like anything," He answered. "Just felt like running a knife through someone's belly. Blood and guts and stuff like that. Not exactly a pretty picture."

My stomach turned and I fought back the bile rising up in my throat.

"Did he have a Luger on him?"

"Nope," George's lips popped as they slid over the sound, and Hoobler's bright, elfish countenance fell a little at the negative response. "If they did, Hoob, I would've gotten it for you. Spit-shined and all."

Martin scowled thoughtfully as he gestured toward me. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Sorry, Sarge," I replied, clearing the stomach acid from my throat. "Sore throat is all."

George's naughty chuckle wafted through the air as he found another joke to amuse himself with. "Choked on a little blood there, Max?"

"Hey! You still got that bayonet?" I mentioned, feeling a little sick to my stomach.

"Yeah, why?"

"Cause I'm going to fucking stick it up your ass if you don't fucking _stop._"

"You're afraid of blood?" Martin asked, incredulous. "Why in the fuck would anyone that can't stand the sight of gore join the army?"

Liebgott showed up, plopping down between me and Bull. I could kiss the pale Jew for wafting in like some dirt-creased, hot-tempered breeze…I'd been worrying about where he'd wandered off since I'd seen him, briefly, that morning next to Lipton. "Who's afraid of blood?"

"Max," Hoobler informed him.

Liebgott frowned disapprovingly at this new gossip. "What kind of fucking phobic idiot joins the army _knowing _there's going to be a lot of blood involved?"

"Funny, that's what _I _just said, Liebgott," Martin said to the Jew, who returned his wisecrack with a nearly undetectable narrowing of the eyes.

"This kind of fucking idiot apparently," George nudged me in the ribs with his pointy elbow. _Ow-ouch._

I shot the wild-haired, dark-eyed boy next to me a heated glare. "No one _asked _you, George Luz."

"They never do," he answered with a crooked smile as he scraped the last of the slop out of the tin can he was holding. "I just share it anyway…for the common good."

"So, how about this..." Hoobler cut in, looking rather enthused as he spoke. "Why did you guys join the Airborne?"

Everyone looked at each other. They all knew their own answers. I was still a little conflicted on mine, but I had a fake one all good and practiced, ready to be shared if ever the question came up in casual conversation. Here was my chance…to find out a little more about the men behind the Screamin' Eagle patches.

George cursed as Gene unearthed a good-sized stone from the exposed slash.

"Fuck!" He gritted his teeth. "Doc, that fuckin' _hurts."_

He glanced up at his patient, apologetic, and returned his focus to the hand. "Sorry George...it's gotta come out."

"Yeah, George," I chimed in, following the Cajun's lead. "Don't be such a fucking _infant_."

"An infant? Really?" His eyes glittered as they fixed on me in utter disbelief. "This coming from the guy who faints at the sight of a papercut?"

"Is it physically impossible for you two stop fucking bickering for more than five minutes?" Martin snapped.

Gene doused the open cut with some water; at the same time, I snorted at George's over exaggeration of my ardent dislike of blood (that one didn't even deserve a _response_) and George hissed in pain. Memories flooded back...when George would show up with bandages on his scabby knees or scraped up elbows from all the falling and rough-housing he did around me, and I'd give him a kiss on the cheek to make it all feel better.

He cleaned the newly-formed beads of crimson from the wound, and I had to look away as the nausea returned with renewed vengeance. Back then there was no fucking _nasty_ blood peeking out of the white cloth.

"You first, Joe," I said, trying to get my mind off my churning stomach and back to the proposed discussion. He looked up at the sound of his first name coming from my general direction, a little surprised at its sudden use, but not unpleasantly. "We all can't help but wonder how a hot-tempered Jewish boy from Detroit ends up fighting a war."

He shrugged and leaned back on his palms with a pensive sigh. "Aw, hell. I don't even know. The extra money most likely. But killing those bastard Krauts…showing them just how big of a fucking mistake they made, starting this fucking useless war…that's mostly why I'm here. I don't like them Germans."

Bull seemed to approve of the turn the conversation had taken. Even George was quietly listening for once, a rather strange occurrence that did not happen often. The tall blonde Sergeant nodded his head at Hoobler, who was staring thoughtfully into the fire, holding onto his gun for dear life as if he would fall headfirst into his thoughts. If he didn't hold onto something, he'd disappear entirely.

"Serving my country was something I'd done for a while…until my father died," Hoobler explained, his smile turning melancholy for a moment. As he continued, it straightened back out into a thin, thoughtful line. "I figured it was only natural that I kept on doing what I did best when the war started and the word got out that the Army needed volunteers. Airborne…I'd never heard of it. I was curious. So here I am."

Martin smirked as he was next in line. "Extra fifty bucks? I couldn't say no to that. Not with a wife to support."

"That's it? Just providing for the ol' missus Martin?" I asked.

He nodded, almost more to himself than to us, and a ghost of a smile flickered underneath his softened features. "Yeah. Taking care of my old girl."

"Bull?"

"Same as all of you, mostly. Extra fifty dollars lining my pocket after living off measly wages during the Depression seemed like an opportunity that just couldn't be passed up so easily." He didn't say another word. Bull struck me as the strong, silent type; to shed any more light on the situation would be uncomfortable for him.

All that was left was me, George and Gene. It would be hard wrestling an answer out of the medic as he never said anything that didn't pertain to his duties. I was sure my old friend's reply would be the exact opposite of difficult, but when it reached his turn, he shrugged listlessly, muttered something about a challenge and fifty bucks, then looked at me.

I turned the attention toward the medic, who was finishing up his work on George's palm. He had sprinkled some sulfa on the open wound, which had been cleaned thoroughly (though I still couldn't look at it), and was now swathing the exposed flesh in an improvised bandage – was that a fucking _sheet _he was using?

"Doc?" George nudged the man next to him, breaking his concentration entirely. Gene blinked a little, his unfathomably dark eyes fixated on the fire for a moment or two, and then sliding over into George's curious gaze.

"Pardon me?" He asked.

"Why're you here?" George clarified. "What made you volunteer for the military's loudest and proudest new establishment, huh?"

The Cajun swallowed against some rising inner turmoil. He looked down at his blood-stained sleeves, his chapped hands, and studied them for a moment. As if he kept the answers locked away in the gears within his tireless fingers. "Money, I guess."

"That's it?"

"That's it." Gene mirrored.

"Easy Company! We're moving out!"

We all sighed heavily and Martin stomped out the fire. George, for extra measure (and just to exercise his title as the little fucking goblin that he was) kicked a little mountain of dirt over the embers with a roguish little giggle. Liebgott and I both seemed to have the same idea and we smacked him simultaneously upside the back of his head as we caught him between us, like a human spider web. The force varied, mostly likely more painful on Lieb's side, but the effect was priceless.

A noiseless reaction that was worth more than words, but mimicked the same intonation in a simple expression. _What the fuck?_

He rubbed at the sore spot and the group laughed. Gene disappeared into the night, quick as a hapless, dark-eyed haunt. I didn't see him after that, not throughout the entire march. Something told me he wanted to be alone after such a close encounter with our group. He'd left for a reason. I stayed between Martin and George, tossed a cigarette to Lieb (who'd smoked his last on the way here), and listened to the sound of our boots against the damp ground.

We didn't just leave a smoking campsite behind as little shards of the words exchanged between us bled into the ground, staining it with the memory of our existence in stark red clarity.

A part of us would be there forever.

* * *

A/N: Damn me and these long ass chapters! And btw, since I couldn't find really good background information on the guys and their reasons for joining the army, I sort of just transitioned into man-mode and tried to think like one. Most of the time, at least from my experience, they don't like talking about stuff like this. Maybe this early in the game, when they still feel like they can be strong for a little while longer, they can refrain. In that time, while I wait for them to break little, I'll research their real reasons for joining Airborne. heeeeeeehawwww!

A change of pace from the last chappie...which, if you didn't read it, was quite emotionally intense. A situation like that, of course, has repercussions and not even our belligerent old girl can escape her own feminine tendencies! Some Perconte, Bull, Hoobler friendship developed. I can't wait to get back to Lipton but he wasn't really hanging around waiting to get moving much in Day of Days so I couldn't include him in the banter. Poor Lip...hope the pup don't feel left out. God...I am tired.

Enjoyyyyyy! THIS TOOK ME 4 HOURS TO UPDATE, 6 HOURS TO WRITE AND THAT MAKES 10 HOURS OF WRITINGGG.  
Review? I know you wanna! Come on...live a little! It's almost Halloween you silly geezes! ;D

Btw, I'll burn in hell for Maxine's sacrilegious commentary. I guess that they'd better put some sunscreen and a parasol in my coffin before they put me in the ground. -bites nails nervously-

disclaimer - oh, I do want to give Rick Gomez's George Luz a big ol' hug and a kiss! Alas, I can't. He belongs to Spielberg, Ambrose and Hanks!


	7. A Kiss Isn't Just A Kiss

I think it started the first time I watched someone bleed.

Something just…fell apart inside and the numbness, like the kind I'd experienced with George that night back in Aldbourne, returned full-formed and inevitable as the death that surrounded us.

The battle for Carentan was nearly over. Everything was winding down from the unrelenting chaos that had covered the town in shells and blood and bullets until we'd nearly ripped the deserted, crumbling buildings completely out of the ground. I'd wandered the streets as the Krauts fled their French fortress, rifle poised for fire in shaking hands, and the only sound I could hear was the cadence of my heart beating in my ears and the breathing current that mirrored every careful step.

Intermittent shots still popped like firecrackers in the distance and each time I jumped at the unexpected noise. I tripped over debris, over bodies, over limbs that had been torn off and were now lying, missing their owners, in the middle of the street as I made my way through the winding labyrinth of loose brick and dust. Gleaming splinters of glass caught in the rivers of blood that flowed freely through the cracks of the walks. I was starting to feel nauseated as the will to ignore them slowly weakened. It was everywhere; how could I escape something so omnipresent?

I tried so hard to keep the bile down. But my efforts were spoiled; I looked up to see a panting figure lying against a wall, another soldier fussing over him. Some words were spoken, but not returned; I couldn't hear them from such a long distance. I squinted to see if I could recognize the features of the man whose back wasn't facing me. They shot back open again as it occurred to me who it was.

"Sergeant Lipton!" I cried, slinging my gun over my shoulder. The numbness told me not to speak too much…I'd get lost in the middle of a sea of words and forget how to wade through them.

Somewhere beside me, as I practically leapt into the middle of the situation and knelt beside the Sergeant, a question was asked. Something about staying with him while the other guy went for help. I nodded and waved the soldier off, who took off like a spooked horse, screaming medic, as soon as I gave the okay.

He must have seen something in my face that wasn't registering as a tangible feeling. "I'm all right, kid. Don't look at me like that…"

"Like what, Sarge?" I asked, ignorant to the root of his discovery.

"Like I'm dying."

My insides turned over on themselves; the movement elicited from me a long, tortured groan. "Oh God…Oh-"I turned away, my hand thrown over my mouth in the panic following such a terrible, nauseating sight. "You're fucking _bleeding_."

"That tends to happen when shrapnel slices through human skin," he deadpanned, trying to sit up a little, but wincing as the pain proved to be too strong even to move.

"Fuck!" My stomach heaved. I closed my eyes, took deep, calming breaths, and narrowly escaped being forced to throw up all over Lipton. "Shit, Lip, I suggest not talking about it…that is - that is, well, unless you like the smell of vomit. I heard it's used, critically acclaimed even, as perfume in some primitive cultures."

He seemed to laugh through the shroud of weakness. Well, at least one good thing came of me being queasy. "Where the hell did you hear that sort of thing?"

"George told me."

A look crossed his features, making them all wither in a sort of frown of realization. Well, _duh, _it seemed to say.

"Let me give you some advice, Max," Lipton gave a sideways sort of chuckle that slithered from the corner of his mouth. He was paling from the blood loss. "I wouldn't take the gospel of good old George Luz to heart. More than half of what that boy says is a bunch of bullshit anyway."

"Duly noted, Sergeant," I replied through a sickly moan, opening my eyes once to see if I could take the sight of his bloodsoaked uniform. Nope, I couldn't do it. I was too soft. A pair of footsteps came running up behind me (saved by the medic…how appropriate)."And if you'll excuse me, Lip, it's about time I emptied my stomach contents in some abandoned alleyway somewhere."

"You have fun with that." He replied breathlessly and rested his head against the brick wall as I escaped, clutching desperately at my middle and the medic and another soldier came thundering in like a stampede of horses behind me.

I ran. I wasn't fast enough. Just as the contents of my insides rose up in the burning cavern of my throat, I ducked into a half-destroyed shop and slammed up against the nearest doorframe. The sound of my retching seemed far away from me; I didn't even feel the ache of throwing up on an empty stomach. It was as if someone had torn me from the fabric of my body and had stitched me into the walls because I sure wasn't feeling one goddamned thing. My arm shook as it wrapped around me and tried to hold my abdomen together as it threatened to disintegrate in my hands.

At last, it stopped. The convulsions of nausea faded away, receded like some black spirit who had exacted his belated revenge. I panted and melted against the doorframe, trying to regain some semblance of willpower to be able to return to the desolation that awaited me outside the obliterated shop.

But I couldn't do it. I couldn't. I didn't belong here and every day, every hour, every fucking _second _brought me closer to realizing I wasn't going to make it out of here alive. The revelation should've hurt. Stung. Made my heart skip a beat or two as it tried to grapple onto the reality, even if it fumbled and let it sink back into evasion. But nothing like that even happened. It was as empty as a cloudless sky inside.

And so my mind did the only thing it could think to do in a moment of grasped apathy.

It summoned anger.

Before I even knew what I had been doing for the past few minutes of detached thinking(_or was it hours? Days? Had I been left behind?)_, I had stood up straight, stared blankly at the wall while I searched for something that looked like emotion internally, and then, as the rage was dredged up somewhere from the back of my head, I regarded the off-white, plaster surface in front of me.

In something that resembled a war-cry, I wound up my fist and sent it through the unstable partition. _There_ it was…there was the pain, the feeling, the proof of humanity. It traveled through the length of my arm in quick-moving strands, sending everything into spasms, and as I cradled my throbbing wrist and the wall seemed to shift beside me, little chunks of broken white plaster settling at my feet, the strangest reaction found me.

I laughed. Laughed as I realized I'd most likely just broken my fucking hand. I laughed as I realized that I was in a war, in a country I knew bumfuck nothing about, and I was as good as dead. All that came of the revelation, that I was going to die, a nameless soldier, in the middle of a field somewhere with not even a fucking pair of authentically labeled dogtags to remember who I was, was a callous, almost mechanical cackle.

The laughter died away slowly as I leaned against the hole in the wall for support, catching my breath and shaking with the excruciating ache that had settled in one of my bones. I didn't know which one, but I sure as fuck knew how much it _hurt_. I tried to swallow, but all that came of the attempt was a strangled grunt and I yanked back the sleeve of my uniform to survey the damage I'd inflicted on myself. The skin was already swelling and turning a deep shade of purple and blue. I could swear, as I took in the sight of what I'd done, that I could see the bruising bleed beneath the discolored flesh and infect it completely. It made me want to throw up again, but the wish was deterred as I heard footfalls echo through the deserted street.

"Max!"

I paused, holding my breath for a moment as I tried to place the voice.

Nothing. There was nothing.

"Max! Where the fuck are you?"

It sounded familiar, but where had I heard it before? In another life? Passing a conversation in which I wasn't involved? Perhaps in my dreams, the pleasant ones that seemed to be avoiding me as of late?

Whoever it was, he was getting annoyed with the lack of reply he was getting. I just barely detected his next private musing as it escaped him. _Jesus Christ, how in the hell does someone get lost in a rinky-dink little town like this? _

"_Max_!"

It hit me as hard as a fucking sledgehammer going five-hundred miles an hour. _George_?

George, is that you?

You stupid son of a bitch. Didn't he know it was dangerous to be yelling when there could be Krauts hiding in alleyways, just itching for an unsuspecting target?

The comfort of his voice revived me from the stupor. The episode had passed. George was alive and apparently as healthy as a fucking horse as I heard his heavy boots stomping against the cobblestone streets and the curses under his breath as he tripped over the debris that was strewn in the middle of it. I stumbled out of the ruined shop, still holding the throbbing, injured wrist against my chest as I made my way into the street. A figure with a gun poised before it, smoke rising from a lit cigarette pressed between a firm, worried mouth, was approaching as it waded through the devastation.

He halted as he heard me coming toward him, his head snapping in my general direction, rifle pointed toward me, and prepared to fire if I turned out to be a Kraut. No such bad luck on his part. The rifle was hurriedly tossed back onto his shoulder, rendered useless by the sight of me, apparently the person he'd been looking for, and he came running.

"Max!" He cried, sliding a little as he stopped right in front of me. His eyes were wide as deep, dark saucers and his hair was plastered to his temples with sweat; he appraised me, his hands resting on my arms as if to still me so he could drink in every detail, and his frantic scrutiny slid down my person. "Oh God," he muttered, almost to himself. "Oh God, you're okay. You're okay…your mother's not going to kill me after all."

He gathered me into his arms and I cried out in pain as my wrist came in contact with his chest.

"What the fuck…" George looked down as he realized I was holding something away from him. Apparently the bruising was worse than I'd thought. "Oh God…she _is _going to kill me."

Gently, he removed the protective hand from the swollen appendage and crooned, soft, to me as I whimpered and tried to take it away from him. "Don't be such a baby…" He said.

"Would you like me to fucking snap your fucking dick off?" I snapped. "Let's see how you feel when you're standing there with no fucking penis. Then we'll see who's the bigger fucking infant, huh?"

"Relax, kid, I just want to see how bad it is, all right?" He replied, his tone soft and yielding, and for once I felt guilty for coming across as so caustic….that is, until he put a little pressure on it.

Without a second to think about what I was doing, I reached up with my good hand and slapped him across the cheek. He let go of my arm and caught the afflicted cheek with antsy, surprised fingers, his eyes flashing. "You know, I'm getting real _fucking_ tired of you doing that!"

"You're hurting me!"

"You're being a fucking baby!"

"Don't insult me, George!" I retorted. "I don't care if this wrist is completely shattered I'll wrestle your scrawny little ass to the ground and beat it to a bloody pulp if you don't shut the fuck up!"

"What is wrong with you, Max?" His voice had risen to a deafening shout by now. "What the fuck is wrong with you, huh? Explain it to me cause I don't understand why it is that you've been so goddamn belligerent these past few days."

"Are you really that _fucking_ stupid? Think about it George! We're in a goddamn war, for Chrissakes! You don't think I'm entitled to acting a little different with my life and the lives of my goddamn friends on the line?"

"I haven't thought about it?" He shouted back, his hands on his hips. "You actually fucking think I haven't thought about it?"

"I know you haven't George! You're oblivious. You think we're back in Toccoa or Aldbourne _don't_ you, like you're okay and everyone's okay and everything is just a ray of fucking sunshine? One big fucking party?" No tears this time. The rage was bubbling up in their stead. "Well here's a nice big fucking bold headliner for you George Luz. We ain't in fucking Rhode Island no more!"

He was silent for a moment. He blinked and his eyes seemed to melt, to collapse, to _disappear. _All that was left of George Luz in that terrible instant was a ghost of the boy I knew. God, he looked completely fucking stunned. As if I'd torn his heart out and stomped on it right in front of him but he never even moved a muscle.

That was the first time I could ever imagine George crying. Breaking down and sobbing in my arms like I did in the years that we were together.

But he didn't. Because if there was anything that I knew about him, it was that he was too strong to break. He would never break. He was made of something stronger than I was and it would hold. He would be okay. I knew he would be.

"You see, Max…that's where you're wrong," he replied calmly, smiling even. "I think I've actually thought about it a little more than you have. It hasn't _fucking_ escaped me that we're in a war. It's a little hard not to notice, don't you think? When your _ass _is being hit by fucking Kraut artillery and your entire company scatters for cover in a few fucking dinky bushes to escape it?"

I was silent for a moment. We traded. I took his shock and he absorbed my rage. A fair trade after what I'd said to him, after the red handprint I'd engraved into his clean-shaven cheek.

He raised his arms, as if he were grappling for explanations, for answers, but found none. "That's all we get, Max," he snorted, laughter slinking along through his chest. "Some dinky fucking bushes!"

I couldn't even feel my arm throbbing anymore. It was far away again, as if the apathy had returned and sheltered the pain beneath its smothering wing. This was the second time I'd taken out my anger on George. The second time he'd reached out to me to save me and received nothing but shit for his efforts. I was a _bitch _and somehow I hadn't figured that out until now.

He was trying so hard to keep me sane, but I think he was beginning to believe that there was nothing he could do.

I _was _sane though. I really was. I was just so fucking tired of all the explosions and the bullets and the blood that I couldn't stand to look at that it was beginning to shake me a little. My footing was uncertain as I searched for my misplaced equilibrium, but I would find it again. I'd find it…even if only to save myself the cruel stab of hurt that raced through me every time I had to see that look in his eyes.

I would trade my boots and walk on hot fucking coals just to escape having to see that look again.

We had been staring absently at each other for the last minute of silence that passed between us. At last, I looked away, and we both breathed again. Ignoring the merciless twinge that tore through my arm as I grabbed his hand and pulled him into the nearly-collapsed building behind us, I decided that only the most heartfelt apology would vanquish such an expression. I fully intended to do so, even if it meant sacrificing my pride.

I turned to him as he followed me inside. "George…" I pursed my lips, exhaling through my nose. I felt my nostrils flare. "George, I'm so…_so _sorry. Can you uh…can you ever forgive a heartless bitch like me?"

His mouth twisted into a crooked smile and he gave an endearingly little chuckle in response. "Well, I don't know…I think I might need a little compensation for dealing with your temper tantrums all the time."

"Huh?"

He tapped his cheek in reply.

"Do you really think that's safe out here in the field?" I asked.

"Who's gonna see us? The mice?" His brow quirked as he regarded the ruined room. "Little tattle-tails…no wonder the cats are always chasing them. They can't keep their little fucking mouths shut."

I laughed and decided, after a very thorough checking of the perimeter, that a kiss on the cheek wouldn't be so bad. But just to be sure, I motioned him into the door of the supply room that was left wide open (probably as the owner fled for his life from what he thought to be a crumbling building at the time) and he trailed inside after me.

"All right," I said, caving. "Just _one _kiss on the cheek and then we've gotta go find Lieutenant Welsh and the rest of first platoon before they leave our asses behind."

"That was probably their plan all along." George teased.

"Yeah, well, can you blame them?" I smirked. "We are pretty fucking annoying."

"Are you gonna kiss me or what? I'll be old and fucking gray by the time you're done making smart-ass remarks."

I rolled my eyes a little and scoffed, but took his face with my one good hand and steadied my target (a moving target at the moment as he was swaying a little from exhaustion, but I intended to remedy this) so I couldn't miss, no matter how bad my coordination was this morning. I could hear him breathing as he anticipated the small gesture and as I leaned in to press the promised kiss against his cheek, he turned his head at the last minute and caught my mouth instead.

His lips were a little chapped as they brushed, softly, against mine, but they were warm. And for the grand total of ten seconds that he kissed me, full-on and slamming my body _hard_ against a thankfully stable wall and nipping and pressing his lips against my open mouth, I was left too staggered by the suddenness of his change of heart that I only had the last two seconds to enjoy it. Luckily the finale was the best part. He shoved his tongue into my mouth, rolling it around inside as if trying to commit the taste of stale cigarettes and filthy breath to memory, and it brushed my top lip as it slid achingly slow back out.

I opened my eyes and found George's back to me as he checked to see if the doorframe was still empty. I tried to catch my breath and blinked away the astonishment as it slowly went away, but not slowly enough. He turned back to me and a devilish leer appeared on his reddened lips as he took in the severity of my reaction.

"_Wow_."

"Did I just unintentionally blow your fucking mind, Maxine?" He asked.

"_That_ was unintentional?" I snorted. "What would happen if you did something like that on purpose? Would my fucking head explode?"

"Whatever makes the most sense to you," he replied nonchalantly, his focus returning to my wrist, which I'd almost (almost, but not quite) forgotten about in George's unexpected attack. "Now that we're all happy as fucking larks here, can I have a look at this wrist? It's looking pretty bad from my vantage point."

I surrendered it to him and this time, as it was collected gingerly into his hands, he was as careful he could manage as he assessed the damage thoroughly. He frowned and let go; I took it back and placed it as gently as I could back at my side.

He clicked his tongue. "Fuck, Max…I think Doc's gonna have to have a good look at that."

"It's broken?"

"I'd bet a pack of Lucky Strikes on it."

I exhaled irritably, suppressing the urge to stomp like a petulant three year old who hadn't gotten her way. "_Fuck_."

"How'd you do that anyway?" He asked.

"Have you seen this place? It's one big fucking broken bone waiting to happen," I replied, looking down at the wounded appendage with some regret. Maybe punching the wall hadn't been the best idea I'd had all day…but even as the thought occurred to me, I realized I wouldn't have been able to control the urge, even if I'd wanted to. "Well, let's find Welsh first. See what orders are."

He nodded and we made our way out of the building.

Before it fucking collapsed on our fucking ignorant heads.

It took a while to find Welsh in all that dust and rubble and bloody mess, but we discovered his lanky little body parked in the middle of a conversation with Winters, throwing back a few swigs of his canteen that George and I were pretty damn sure wasn't water.

Well fuck…since when were CO's human?

"Lieutenant Welsh, sir!"

Welsh's head snapped toward our approaching footsteps at the sound of my voice. He seemed to frown a little. "Well if it isn't my two least favorite smart-asses," he quipped, nodding at Winters as he finished what he was saying and walked off in the opposite direction. "It's a good thing I didn't need any fucking air support or a fucking truck radioed in, George, or else I'd gave been shit out of luck!"

For a moment, I was struck by the unanticipated appearance of the larger-than-life Lieutenant and watched him leave, curbing something of a feminine sigh of appreciation as I realized, to my dismay, that Winters had quite a vision of a backside on him. Which was, unfortunately, only flattered and made more beautiful by his fucking tease of a tailored uniform.

As if being attracted to Luz's poor excuse for an ass wasn't enough of a curse, I had to find Winters' ass appealing as well? Next thing I knew I'd be drooling over Welsh. And then I remembered Welsh didn't have an ass, just two indented cheeks slapped together and a hole in the middle, and realized I was safe as this was virtually impossible.

"Sorry, sir. I've always wanted to know what it was like to play medic," George replied, motioning to my swollen wrist. "It seems my dreams are finally coming true, sir."

The CO's brow knitted together and he glanced at George's excuse. His eyes then widened for a second. "Well, fuck me Private, what you got there is a broken wrist…you seen a medic about that yet?"

"No, sir," I replied. "I haven't gotten the chance. Figured I'd find out what was going on first."

"Nothing new, Austen," he replied nonchalantly, his eyes skimming the horizon, as if for encroaching enemy fire. "Resting here for a while. We'll let you know when it's time to move out. In the meantime, report to the nearest aid station and get cleared for the field. Luz you ah...you go do whatever the fuck Luz's do best."

"Yes, sir." I replied, and George just laughed as he I followed him in the general direction of the aid station that was set up just outside the town of Carentan.

"What the hell do you guys do when one of you has take a shit!" He called after us, clearly referring to the fact that he never, not once since D-Day and probably before, at Toccoa and Mackall and Aldbourne, saw us apart for more than five minutes at a time. Kinda like Popeye and Shifty…they were best friends too and they were almost never separated. _Ever_.

"Well, someone's gotta hold the toilet paper, sir!" George shouted back over his shoulder, still walking beside me. We heard Welsh chuckle as he contemplated the sincerity of the answer he'd been provided with. Apparently he hadn't taken it seriously. Sure, it wasn't as straightforward as he'd hoped, but at least he'd gotten one.

"You think he thinks we're gay or somethin'?" I asked.

"Do _you _think we're gay?" He retorted lightly, smirking at me. I punched him in the shoulder with my good hand and laughed. "Fuck, we've gotta work on that arm of yours. I didn't even feel that one."

On our way out of town, we passed a group that was discussing how many Krauts they'd gotten while they nursed their post-battle smokes. I recognized Muck, Penkala and Malarkey, who was the only one not surrounded by a cloud of nicotine-filled air (a fact he didn't look too happy about) all sitting in one small cluster. I fished out my Lucky Strikes with one hand, a task that proved harder than I thought it'd be and hoped I'd never have to do again.

Next time I'd punch a bunny rabbit or something (I winced at the thought of inflicting intentional pain on something so cute and fluffy).

Okay, a pillow.

"Want some help with that?" George asked, watching me with unabashed amusement.

"No, I've got it. You don't gotta coddle me everytime I get a little scratch, George," I replied in a wounded sort of _snap_. That was my _pride _he was sacrificing here...at least what little I had left of it. "You want one?"

"I've got a few left of my own. You keep yours…" He gestured to the bloated excuse for a wrist that hung limply at my side. "You'll need them after a few days of that fucker throbbing all night long, interrupting your sleep and making life one big slice of hell."

"Sounds fantastic," I replied sarcastically, digging my lighter out of my pocket. "Where can I sign up?"

"Looks like you already did." He deadpanned, and then halted behind the trio of chattering soldiers. "Well if it isn't my three favorite girls. Discussing your beaus while you get your nails done, my pretties?"

Muck held out his hand, imitating the delicacy of the female race. "You think this color makes me look too pale, Luz?" He asked. Malarkey snorted and kicked the man opposite of him.

"Holy fuck!" Malarkey looked up at us, his eyes widening as they took in the sight of my plumped up wrist. "What the hell happened to your wrist?"

I handed him the smoke, and his expression of mixed surprise and horror changed drastically into one of surprise and infinite joy. "Well, Malark, it's a long story. Let's just say one of them Krauts gave me this here early Christmas gift on his way to Hell and we'll leave it at that."

Malarkey's sigh of relief sounded off below me as he leaned a little closer to the lighter I had offered, sticking the end of his cigarette into the flame. "Oh…that's good. Hell, that's so nice. I owe you one, Max."

I nodded at him and winked as Muck piped up. "How many Krauts did you guys get?"

George jumped at the opportunity of pumping up his sore ego and replied first. "I blew a few to fucking Kingdom come."

"Grenades?"

"Bet your ass."

Penkala joined the stream of bullshit that was being tossed between the men, figuring he'd get his two cents in while he was at it. "You're my hero, George."

"Don't make me blush, Penkala," George replied, a side-long smile inching up his apple-bottom cheeks. "Just doin' my job, serving my country…fucking up some Germans while I'm at it. God, I _love_ my work."

"What about you, Max?" Muck blew a puff of smoke my way, squinting through the unfiltered screen of golden sunlight. "How many'd you get?"

"A few."

Liar.

And to think I'd walked through life on the principled path of knowing I wasn't a liar. That I liked to tell the truth. That the truth was my _friend. _George was the one who lied through his teeth when we got caught. I just stood there, silent as a mute, as I listened to him tell a completely different story about what we'd been doing all night, why we were late and why the indicative presence of Mrs. Jenkins's famous jams (the only handmade preservatives for five miles) were smeared all over our faces and hands in the form of seed-speckled purple and red stains. That made me an accomplice, sure, but not a liar. Those were two completely different things (at least in my _head_ it made sense).

"Only a few?" Penkala asked, unimpressed.

"Only a few." I parroted.

Truth was I hadn't killed one. I'd seen them, thrown grenades at them, hell I'd even shot one or two in the leg (an instant killer…I was one hell of a murdering machine), but I hadn't killed one. Maybe I was bad aim like George said. Maybe that was why I lost at darts all the time.

Maybe I hated the word maybe on principle. Because maybe made me out to be a liar, a good for nothing shot and a loser at bar games.

Fuck all hell.

"You should get that looked at." Muck nodded his head at my purple-and-black wrist.

"Quit distracting him and I might be able to drag his midget ass over to Doc before the fucking thing falls off," George retorted plainly, grabbing a hold of my sleeve and walking off in the direction of the town's outskirts.

I waved goodbye. Malarkey thanked me for the cigarette and returned to their conversation. The rest of the trip to the aid station was quiet except for our footsteps and my intermittent hisses of pain, at which George snickered and rolled his eyes...apparently he couldn't remember the time he'd broken his leg jumping over a fence to tip a fucking cow five years back. I'd bet my extra fifty dollars a month that cow was still laughing, however. He hadn't forgotten, even if George had.

We entered the station and George made the tell-tale noise of the initial static a radio made when it was first turned on. It sounded like he was trying to clear his throat. A few people stopped and looked before realizing it was just George Luz and resumed their business. Everyone knew George was an ass, if not a lovable one at that.

"Attention! Attention!" George mocked the sound of a voice coming in over an intercom. "Would Dr. Gumbo please report to the midget with the broken wrist? I repeat, Dr. Gumbo to the injured midget. Over!"

"I can't believe I've wasted my entire life on you." I seethed, and watched as Gene, who'd been scanning the length of a paper attached to a clipboard, looked up from his task with a furrowed brow of confusion and then realized who it was. He pursed his lips and started walking toward us with a sort of knowing scowl staining his stark, pale features, the clipboard tucked under his arm. The poor kid looked tired as all hell…determined, but nonetheless tired.

"Max, look," George smiled naughtily as Gene came within earshot of us. "It's Doc. Hallelujah, we are saved."

The Cajun ignored his comment and his eyes instantly zeroed in on my awkward posture and then to my wrist. His sixth sense that allowed him to detect pain without even looking was going off like a siren in a quiet room. "Whoa, there, Maximillian. I could tell a broken wrist from a mile away."

Of course, my friend had a wisecrack to match his instantaneous diagnosis. "Good thing we came to the bone-whisperer then, huh?"

George and I followed as the medic lead us to a makeshift cot, which he gestured for me to sit on and he looked at George (who lifted his brow inquiringly at the medic's attention while standing a few safe feet away) a little way's behind him. He seemed to be okay with the set-up and pulled up a chair to begin his assessment of the damage. I didn't even wince as he tucked the wrist into the palm of his hand and began pouring his focus over it.

"Damn, doc, are you sure those aren't made of gold?" George commented, scowling as he realized the man's innate gentleness. "He didn't even make one _fucking _peep."

"That's why he's a medic and you're the fucking broadcast jockey," I rebutted.

"That's really mature." He replied. "Really, after all I did for you?"

Gene was silent throughout this verbal barrage. But I sure couldn't help but wonder if his eyebrows could sink any lower into his eyes without comprising their vision. His head moved up and down a little as he surveyed the bruising, the swelling, and finally returned the whole arm to me, lifting his forehead a little as he formed small ties of conclusions about my condition in his head.

"I think you might have to be taken off the line."

He might as well have shot me in the leg. It might've stung a little less. "What'd you say there, Gene? Sorry...I could've sworn I heard the words '_taken off the line'_?"

Gene met my eyes full-on. "You heard me right. This doesn't look so good. It's a transverse fracture of the ulna or the radius…can't be sure," he replied. "You'll need to ice and elevate it and I can give you some painkillers for the pain and wrap it, but I think a cast and a stay here at the station for a few days would do it more good if you want to regain full use of it after the healing's all done."

"For a fucking wrist? I could shoot a Kraut while blindfolded with one arm tied behind my back."

"You came here for my opinion, didn't you?" He asked, looking a little annoyed at my obstinacy. "Well, there it is. I don't think you should go back until that's healed good and proper."

"Easy will be moving out in the next _fucking _hour, Gene." I replied, fixing my gaze on him. I wasn't angry with him. Hell no, he was just doing his job, telling me what needed to happen and whatnot.

But fuck if I wasn't leaving the company. Not for a second. Not even for a broken wrist.

I swore I could see his dark eyes turn a little hard as he stared me down. For a second, I thought I could see Spiers. Oh hell I couldn't even _think _about the creepy fucker without a shiver running up and down my spine.

"Don't be stubborn, Max," George interjected as he fished for a cigarette out of his breast pocket. "If the man says you need a break, then you need a break."

"I've already got one, thanks." I replied, laughing as I caught his joke and motioning to the offending, wounded limb to emphasize my retort.

"I think you should stay here." Gene insisted.

"Well I think you should wrap it, shoot me up with some morphine and send me on my merry fucking way because that's the only possible outcome, Gene," I said, my eyes pleading with him. "Please, don't try to convince me to stay…I won't do it. All you'll get it is a whole lot of frustration and a headache for it."

"I assume you're going to stay then, George?" Gene turned to the short, disheveled figure behind him. It beamed at the prospect of a joke.

"I think that's the first time assuming hasn't made an ass out of you, Doc," he replied.

"I'll take that as a yes," he sighed, clearly defeated, and then stood up as he shoved one beautiful, elegant hand into his breast pocket for a syrette. "I'll administer the morphine and then leave you for a few minutes to fetch something cold. George, watch him for me?" He paused and George nodded his assent to his entreaty.

The Cajun looked back at me, grave as a stone angel in a snow-covered graveyard. "And I'm not joking, Maximillian, you keep that damn wrist elevated while I'm gone."

I laughed at his all-too-serious demand as I propped my wrist up on George's shoulder, which had appeared beside me. The aforementioned man glanced briefly at me and then brought the smoldering paper folded into the crease of his fingers back to his lips. "Will you spank me if I don't?"

He shook his head with a smile, stuck the needle right into the epicenter of the ache and then left, embarking on the fruitless quest of finding some ice in this useless place.

I breathed a deep sigh of relief as the drug began to work its magic fingers through the tangled nerves.

Oh, what a beautiful thing morphine truly was.

* * *

By the time George and I returned to Carentan, I had an expertly wrapped wrist, a cigarette in my mouth and a happy fucking smile plastered on my face. The effects of the morphine hadn't worn off yet, thankfully, but I was going to be one unhappy camper when it did.

We neared the town, only to see a bloodstained figure leaning up against a derelict wall, shards of brick and mortar falling like spilt guts around his feet, like some sentinel at the mouth of hell. What was that three-headed dog's name again that guarded the entrance to the underworld?

The correlation to Cerebrus only seemed to take on a whole new level of aptness as Liebgott's face was pieced together from the formless haze of distance as we neared him. He looked a little dazed, if not angry, but this was his usual. It was nothing to worry about, really. A cigarette was left forgotten in his hand; it looked like it hadn't been touched since he lit it up, the ashes simply falling to the ground as he'd neglected to flick them away. What a waste of a perfectly good smoke.

I kicked his boot, lightly, as George and I stopped in front of the hot-head and watched while he stared blankly at the ground. I looked at what he was focusing on, a patch of dirt, and tried to figure out what was so unerringly interesting about it. Perhaps it was shaped like a pair of breasts…I don't know. Perception was all about the imagination and clearly Lieb and I shared no similarities given our separation of race.

It was a wonder I adored him so much as he was everything the sort of man that women scorned…that even I scorned.

"Lieb?" I ventured. He looked up from the spot and blinked a little, sheepish, and remembered the stick of ashes in his hand. It was flicked away.

"You all right there pal?" George asked.

"Yeah," Lieb replied, nodding his head. "Yeah, just thinking. Where've you guys been?"

"Aid station," I replied.

He seemed to perk up at this answer, his eyes glittering. "Yeah? Did ya happen to see Tipper there?"

"No, why?"

He shrugged. "No reason."

I was about to ask him what the fuck he was on about before a voice rose over the late morning bustle of the newly taken Carentan. It was Welsh. Which meant we were moving out.

Despite how insistent I was on returning to my platoon against Gene's medical opinion, I wasn't exactly thrilled about leaving the blessedly quiet haven after having only five minutes of rest. But not one physical manifestation of reluctance could be heard amongst the three of us as Welsh's voice echoed off the ruins of the little French town.

"First platoon!" He announced. "We're heading out! Let's move it, come on!"

I sighed a little and reached for a smoke. "You want one Lieb?" I offered.

"Yeah, sure." He responded lazily, almost numb, and completely bereft of all the passion and anger that defined him. It was as if he'd been stripped clean by the same apathy that had gotten me earlier, but he wouldn't tell nothing like that to me. "Thanks. Don't mind if I do."

I lit up two cigarettes and walked between them on our way out of the village.

We didn't know where we were goin', but hell if we were going anyway.

* * *

A/N: Man, I can't seem to write a short chapter if I tried. Btw, lyke, **Miluielwen **has a story out called Femme De L'Ombres so why don't you go check it out? It's new, but undoubtedly amazing already, and I'm sure it'd be a nice reprieve from my sucky writing style and smart-ass remarks, eh? Go. Now. I COMMAND YOU. You'll love it, I _promise_. ;)

Anywhoodles. Next chapter we'll be dealing with the battle immediately following Carentan. I'll go into more detail on that battle since I completely skipped the gory details here, don't you worry your little heads about that! Good thing I wrote a short one this time cause I think you guys might be getting a little tired of reading 12 thousand word essays on the bad effects of war and sarcasm on soldiers in WWII. Blahahah.

Georgggee is a sexy beast. That is all.

disclaimer - For once, I won't make a comment on how sexy Rick Gomez is or his depiction of George Luz in the series. Maybe that qualifies as making a comment. Oh well. He belongs to Spielberg, Ambrose and Hanks!


	8. Even CO's Get Down and Dirty

It just fucking figured that it started raining a few minutes after we headed out from Carentan.

What, were we plagued by bad weather every time we had to get up off our tired asses and go do some hard fightin'? Jump out of perfectly good airplanes? Stick our human tendencies to get tired and cranky up our asses and waddle through the shit we were having thrown at us like it was a pool of chocolate?

I could go for some chocolate right about then.

I tried not to think about it. Thinking about it made it a reality. An inevitability. Something I would have to face in the end, whether it be _the ultimate end_ or just the end of the day, the station at the end of a train of thought. Hell, even the end of this here mud-strewn meadow I was pushing through at the time being.

It was all about the power of persuasion and the miiind was one fucking scary place if used for the worst of things (see: world domination, George's devilish sense of humor that was often taken too far in honor of a good prank). And attitudes, George always reiterated to me, typically at the most inopportune times he could think of (sitting in a quiet classroom while taking an exam with the teacher staring right at him, for example), were like assholes. Everyone has them and they sure as hell don't smell like fucking flowers.

Well, I could have a good attitude. Sure, I could! If the rest of the boys could do it, then I sure as fuck could too! I couldn't go without cursing like a sailor for a good five minutes, but at the very least I could walk through a wet field with my boots slipping through three inches of mud, nearly resulting in a fucking broken ankle to match my fucking broken wrist, which reminded me that my wrist was throbbing like a fucking heartbeat –

I guess I couldn't go as long exercising my ability to give the good old positive approach a go as I first thought…about as long as I could without spouting profanities. Which wasn't long at all.

After leaving Carentan, our group began to spread out into a formless pattern. Men were scattered across the grassy plain as their wide-eyed, heart-racing vigilance left no room in their narrowed minds for keeping to something of a formation. Hell, Welsh didn't seem to give a hoot (not even a holler as it was oddly silent in the front of the trudging company) or one flying fuck so no one saw any good reason to keep close together. Anyway, spreading out made it harder for the Krauts to take us all down. A few here and there might get hit, but all in all, the greater good was protected by what was just plain inattentiveness or a poor bloke with some raunchy gas…

Well, it was to be expected with our diet. Canned beans? That was just one ghastly gust of a back-door breeze waiting to happen.

Familiar faces kept close by. I saw Hoobler on Frank's right flank and Lieb was on my left. George, of course, was next to me, intermittently humming one of our favorite songs that we'd frequently performed drunken renditions of back in Toccoa. The song had woven in and out of his cognizance, it seemed, for the past twenty minutes we'd been walking. He must've been thinking back to the good old times, before we'd ever known what human insides felt and smelled like. The exact sour notes in the nocturnes of death and pain and misery. Before things had changed for good and before there was ever an inclination in our minds that maybe, just maybe, there was no going back to the way things were before this. Maybe we were stuck in a twisted metamorphosis and there were no cracks through which to escape in his smothering cocoon.

He needed air. George needed a little of that Rhode Island, brine-soaked breeze.

Every time the song found him in his absentmindedness and he welcomed it with a gentle humming, I couldn't help but smile. Images of Toccoa flashed before my eyes, bleeding into the gray-green backdrop. And then nostalgia would give me a good kick in the ribs, right where my heart was, and it would start waxing poetic about the times back in Rhode Island in the form of picturesque memories.

Visits to the old ice cream shop down the street after school, where we'd heckle and tease the old man who ran the place into giving us ice cream cones for a nickel (chocolate for me, strawberry for George). Racing the summer batch of ponies on our walks home, which we would give up on when we realized we could never outrun an animal with four legs and settled for outrunning each other. George would always win; the boy had practically been made of legs. Not anymore.

It was always _not anymore_. Not strong anymore. Not wanting to go on anymore. Not caring about living or dying anymore.

I wanted things to be _still _for once. Still somewhat innocent. Still alive and free and loving every second of life to death. Still that girl that came to Toccoa who was in love with George's ass and nearly snapped her neck off looking at all the boys in their P.T. gear. _Damn_, that had been one pretty fucking sight.

The minutes passed. I was the girl who'd jumped Normandy again. The girl who'd fought Carentan and was now walking through some godforsaken patch of land in who the fuck knew where. Welsh probably did. Hell, Lieutenant Nixon probably knew more about this fucking field than anyone. He probably knew where the rabbits burrowed and the meadowlarks stopped to rest and where the cows that sometimes grazed here last took a big shit. He probably knew where to step, then, if this was true. Lucky bastard knew everything; why be God when you could be fucking Lieutenant Nixon?

It was quiet. No one wanted to talk, they just wanted to keep their minds on one thing – walking. Little subcategories filtered in and out of this main objective. Staying awake, keeping from shitting their pants, ignoring the man on their left and right flanks, keeping their rifles balanced in their hands. There were too many subcategories to count. I wondered, idly, what was going through George's head; when I looked over to see if I could catch a sneak peek into his secret thoughts.

Looked as blank as a fucking chalkboard from here. Though, he was chewing on his bottom lip a little.

Maybe it was itchy. Who the fuck knew.

For being an openly friendly, buddy-buddy-with-everyone-but-your-mother type of guy, George was one tough nut to crack. It was sort of like reading a book in Latin with your eyes closed in the dark after throwing the volume at the opposite end of the room in frustration. It was that fucking _hopeless_. I never could figure out what went on behind that goofy mask of his, and after a while, when this open-but-really-just-closed persona began to take the place of gap-toothed George with the knobby knees, I just fucking gave up. I couldn't read him when he was like this. It was impossible unless he let you. Unless he decoded his every thought and feeling and let it be known to the world in a way that we could understand.

Apparently Frank didn't like the quiet and he decided to fill it up with some gripe that was relevant to our current situation. I vaguely heard his voice trickle into my deep musing and was pulled to the surface, back to reality, much to my dismay. Why did he have to pick now, of all times, to start talking? God, I wanted to slap the _fuck _out of that little brown midget and he wouldn't even know what hit him until he sat up and saw me standing over his ass with a baseball bat.

That would look in incriminating for certain.

George, too, was wrestled from his silence when Perconte outright addressed him.

"Hey Luz!"

The aforementioned gave a grunt of acknowledgement. It came out like something of a hybrid between _huh _and _yeah. _That or _huh _spoken in Guarnere's native Philly. God, I missed good old Wild fucking Bill and his Philadelphia twang…I hadn't seem him since before we jumped; I wondered suddenly, and with a sharp stab of fear straight to the heart, if he was still alive. _If there is a God, then there will be a live fucking Bill Guarnere too the next time I see all the boys of second platoon hanging around._

"How far are we going?"

I snorted. As if George knew anything like that. That was a question for the almighty Nixon of all-knowing answers. As if we had the right to know and he had enough power of rank to tell us.

Fucking _duh, _Frank. _Duh_.

"Oh Jesus, Frank," George groaned, as annoyed by the dumb question as I was, apparently. "I don't know. Until they tell us to stop."

Hoobler decided it was the perfect time to insert his own impersonation of almighty Nixon into the conversation. Like he'd been working on it for years and he finally had the chance to put his talents on display. He pointed to the grass-covered knoll that was rising up before us, plain as day. "High ground," he replied. "There's high ground up ahead."

Not bad for a Private with no more fucking clue than any of the rest of us had.

Not bad at all.

"Okay, genius," Frank retorted, apparently neither impressed or amused. "Answer me this, then. How come _Easy _Company is the _only _company who's either at the front of an advance, or, like now, exposed at the far edge of the line?"

"To keep you on your toes."

"No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm _saying_ we're never in the middle. And we're the fifth of nine companies in this regiment. Able to Item. Think of it!"

But Hoobler never even got to think about it, much less answer.

Because that's when the first rounds were fired on us. We didn't know what direction they were coming from, but we weren't about to stick around in a standing position and figure that one out either.

Not unless we were looking to get a bullet in the head, that is.

Everyone went down like a whore on a john – quick and dirty. Mud splashed everywhere in the midst of the rush as bodies collapsed heavily into the soft ground, into eyes and flaring nostrils and mouths that were slack with confusion. I tasted a little dirt myself and hoped to high fucking heaven that there wasn't a little special ingredient hidden in there somewhere.

"See what I mean?" Someone cried over the sound of the shots.

No one answered him, though. There was no time for answers. There was only time for crawling through sludge and finding cover and shooting at those fucking Krauts. Shoot them back. I'd get one this time. I swore on my ma's life, that she pause instantaneously in the middle of cleaning the kitchen counter for the fifth time that morning and God would strike her dead on the fucking _spot_, if I didn't get at least one, that I'd proudly bear the anonymous name of my first real casualty today.

I didn't know what date it was, and this thought ran through me like a hot blade as I crawled through what felt like miles of brown puddles and grass (time was an illusion here…something you could feel passing, but couldn't quite put into words or thoughts that were easier to understand). I did know it was June. And that was the extent of everything I did know. That was it.

I'd lost George in the confusion, but at the moment I didn't care. I just set my Carbine down hard on the earthy ledge and started shooting. I didn't really know what I was shooting at, where the bullets were going, as everything just seemed like one big wet, gray blur, but hell if I wasn't shooting anyway. The recoil was like a breath of life – it tried to revive me, but only succeeded in making me jump and then recede back into numbness. Into the apathy I'd come to wear as often as I did my uniform.

Welsh was screaming orders, but I couldn't make out what they were. I just did what I was supposed to do and hoped he wasn't telling us to move out and find better cover cause I sure as hell wouldn't hear him.

Before long, a few minutes maybe, all fire ceased between us. And it was over almost as soon as it began. But they'd be back, Welsh promised. We'd stay here for the night.

Sorry, ma, I thought as I sat back and tried to remember how to inhale, closing my eyes as if having them open and constantly blinking only proved to be a distraction from breathing. My rifle crossed over my chest like a shield and I held onto it with shaking hands. I still hadn't gotten used to battle yet.

I'll find some way to send a bit of money home for your funeral, ma. No Krauts this time.

Any cries for medic? The thought occurred to me so fast I barely had time to register it. I hadn't heard any but, then again, I couldn't hear a stampede thundering by in all that fucking noise. It took me a moment of floating easily back into reality to remember that I didn't want to know if anyone was hurt or dying or already dead. No one wanted to, least of all the medics themselves. I wanted to be the last to know because that way I wouldn't have their loss weighing down on me like an anchor in the deepest ocean. Save me the crushing sensation of knowing there was one less man going home to his family, his wife and kids, the threads of the life he'd left behind to finish later.

It made death feel that much closer. Close enough to scathe me and George and Lieb and Martin and Bull and every one I'd started to fall in love with as men of honor and loyalty and worth. It was getting harder to hear the cries of medic over the sound of bullets. The agony over the deep, earth-shaking rattle of artillery.

A few minutes had passed since the enemy fire had ceased and the approval was given to move around. Rustling of uniforms being lifted off of soggy ground and unsure footing and a few _fuck's _as the balance was lost drifted over my consciousness. I heard the footsteps as they struggled to stand up on wobbly legs, on unstable soil. Some of them found friends while others just stayed put and tried to stay calm. Not scream or cry or just plain go batshit crazy in the middle of a fucking war. I couldn't blame them. Lunacy sounded kind of nice right now.

I'd gotten so used to the sound of boots against the slick grass and sticky mud that I didn't notice his.

He gave me a kick to the feet. The right one first, then the left. I knew it was him because only he would know exactly how to annoy a person with their eyes closed under such duress.

"Wake up, sleeping beauty, it's time to get those pretty little hands dirty and dig some foxholes."

"Where in the fuck did you go, huh?"

"This isn't going to be a repeat of D-Day," he asked hesitantly, stepping back an inch or two. "Is it? Cause if it is just say so and I'll run for cover. That or shoot you…whichever comes across as more effective."

I gave a listless sort of laugh and a matching smile to go with it and my head rolled to the side as I blinked for the first time in ten minutes. There he was. George Luz. Standing at five feet, eight inches in all of his beautiful mud-covered glory with a radio slapped on his back (fuck, that must've felt heavy to a tired little body) and a M1A1 Carbine tossed, all but forgotten, over his right shoulder.

It struck me as strange in that moment, where everything and everyone but God seemed to strike me down, that George was never heckled for his height. Or lack thereof. Fuck particulars…I was tired of being surrounded by all this blood when I couldn't even look at it then without tossing my breakfast. Whole chunks of memories came flooding back, as vividly beautiful as the day they were forged in the homesick portion of my brain. George had found it utterly hilarious watching my insides fall out of my mouth and would pull blood pranks on me all the time.

This was one of those things I'd have to grow into. Like my mother's pearl earrings that I never wanted to wear. Or a crooked smile.

"If I promise to help you with our foxhole, will you promise to let me sleep?" I asked. Ultimatums usually worked in a time like this.

"I can't promise anything with those Krauts hiding in the bushes over there, waiting to pounce on us any chance they get. But I sure as hell can try, huh?"

"Good enough for me," I replied and stuck out a limp arm. "Help me?"

"You're asking the guy with ten times more equipment strapped to his ass than you to help you up off the ground?" He asked, sounding completely serious for once. "Somehow that seems unfair to me."

"What's that you said George? You say you want a repeat of D-Day?" I snorted a little. "Why, you fucking masochist you…well, if you say so!"

I decided it was time for a little resettling of the score. He was much too far ahead, after all. I recall all of those mornings before school, when he'd squirt ketchup on his shirt and come into our kitchen (only a grand and uninvited entrance would do for the great George Luz) moaning and groaning and clutching his gut. I'd run out screaming; he'd fall on the floor laughing. Like clockwork, the usual reactions from my ma and pa would ensue – pa, newspaper and untouched coffee before him, would shake his head and hike the paper up in front of his face as he grumbled into the headliners about the troublemaker ruining all chances of his daughter getting married. As if they gave one inky shit.

Ma would laugh and pinch George's dimpled cheek adoringly, proud as a peacock that her future son-in-law (ah, one of many delusions my mother had about the two of us) had such a good sense of humor. Black as a fucking starless night, sure, but hey! Humor was humor to my ma.

Ah, yes. Payback would be sweet; I opened my mouth _real_ wide.

Present-day George didn't like the prospect of a little well-deserved irony, apparently.

He almost tripped over his own boots as he staggered forward, leaning over a little so I could reach his hand. "How may I help you there, Max? A little hand up? Oh, sure! It's no problem. Here you go, upsy-daisy…" He yanked me up by my good hand and nearly ripped my arm out of its socket. It seemed he was feeling a little passive-aggressive…I couldn't even begin to wonder _why_.

But I could begin to wonder why the fuck my wrist was hurting like a _son of a bitch._

"There. Am I off the hook?" He asked, his brow furrowed.

"Almost. You're about a heartbeat away from getting the third degree cause you, my dear boy, are the reason my wrist feels like someone's fucking stabbing me with a blunt rock right now."

No one was looking. He got lucky too much…I had to just kick his ass anyway, even if fortune was on his side, if I wanted to keep him grounded.

He reached for the offending limb and gave it a quick healing kiss. The kind that ma gave me when I was a little girl and would scrape my knee playing hide and go seek with George (he'd cheat and peep through the cracks of his fingers when I wasn't looking). He even threw in a few giggle-inducing sound effects of him pretending to gnaw through the skin and bone to reach the roots of the pain and tear them out one bite at a time. It was simply fucking adorable when he did it…probably because he could manage to be adorable even covered in a thick coat of mud while wearing five day old skivvies that had seen way too many bullets and way too much war on behalf of their owner to even hope of being only slightly soiled. Lucky shithead he was for certain.

"All right. Now am I off the hook? Cause I'm kind of feeling like a lone fish in the hands of a fucking sadistic fisherman right about now."

"Sounds unpleasant," I replied, clicking my tongue in mock sympathy. "How exactly does that feeling go again?"

He mocked the movements of some impersonation caught between a seizure and a monkey with Down Syndrome playing grab-fanny. Complete with tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth and his eyes rolling back in his head. The thought alone made me laugh, but the visual was much, _much_ better.

"All right, all right," I said, sniffing as I recovered from the hilarity of the moment, and then raised my useless arm. "Now how do I go about this shoveling business?"

"Oh fuck," he said, immediately raising a hand to scratch his head as he took in my wrapped appendage. "I completely forgot about that."

I watched, blankly, as his hands thread through his mud-flecked hair. "Even though we were _just_ talking about it…"

"Yeah. Yeah, well, you see…there's this war going on and I kind of got a little distracted by the fucking _bullets_ coming straight for my ass…but hey, silly me! I can't believe I forgot something as important as this! It must have just…slipped my mind."

"Your mind's getting a little too slippery lately," I told him pointedly. "I suggest a check in with Gene before it slides out of your head completely."

"Well, I guess you get to just sit there and stick your thumb up your ass."

"Sounds pleasant," I replied. "Let's go with that set-up. I like it."

George was too deeply invested in an early onset of grouchy-old-married-man moping to hear me, however. "Of course you do…because it involves you doing nothing and me doing all the work."

"You want to trade?" I scoffed. He had a knack for really getting on my fucking nerves lately. "You can have the aching arm, goddamn it, and I'll dig the foxhole! Which bone would you like me to snap first? Cause with you pissing me off like this I'm about ready to just pick any which one I damn well choose."

"No need to resort to violence, your royal highness," he replied. "I'll make your goddamn bed for you. But please…forgive me. I forgot the purple silk sheets and matching goose-feather pillows back in _fucking_ Carentan."

"Fuck you, George."

The sound of heavy boots coming our way wandered into the warzone of our two-man-battle. "You two fighting _again_? If you assholes didn't have dicks, I'd mistake you for an old fucking married couple."

Even if he hadn't made such an completely unnecessary and relatively stupid comment, I couldn't have mistook those heavy footsteps, marked by a sort of lilting swagger that made the girls back in Georgia swoon, for anyone else in the world. Even if I wanted to.

"Old couples don't fuck," George corrected him. "Which explains why they're always fighting."

I whirled around, not even slightly tickled by the comment, glaring hard at our Jewish intruder. "Stay out of this Joseph _fucking _Liebgott or I'll break one of your bones too!"

"That's your middle name? Fucking?" George snorted at his own joke. "Your mother didn't love you all that much, did she Joe?"

"_Can it_, Luz," Lieb barked. He ran his tongue over his teeth, thoughtful. As if he didn't quite know what to do with the idea of a midget reciting his full name like that in his presence.

"Your ass is as good as whipped, my Jewish friend. You'd better run for it."

"Nah, I'm no pussy," Lieb shook his head; he didn't even bother hiding his smirk, not even for the sake of George's ego. "Not like you. I can actually fight off a midget."

"Oh, well, very nice of you to say so, Joe," George replied pleasantly, but beneath the surface lurked provocation. "Fuck you too, buddy! Have a nice day."

"I will once I get this son of a bitch done," Lieb replied, sticking the skin of the earth with his shovel. It bled deep, warm soil and roots that groped through thin air like suffocating hands. "Then I'm going to settle in my hole, get some sleep and dream of some big-breasted women running around stark fucking naked for a little while."

"Sounds like a regular, good old-fashioned Liebgott time," I mentioned, then turned to George, who was only into his first shovel-full of dirt before the guilt had me eating out of the palm of its hand. "Aw, fuck! I'll help, all right? Just…stop giving me that look or I'll slap it the fuck off!"

His eyes widened and, if he hadn't had his hands on the shovel, they might have gone up defensively to match the wide-eyed look on his face. "What the - ? I'm not making any face! I'm just digging our foxhole! What in the _hell _crawled up your ass and died?"

I plopped down on my ass and started digging with one hand. Apparently this struck George and Lieb as funny and the sound of them laughing hysterically at my attempts to be useful with an injury that tended to make people useless sure didn't fall on deaf ears. _I _ignored them just fine. But poor Shifty just couldn't resist.

"Oh, Jesus Christ!" Lieb cried, the words muffled. I could just picture the two of them sitting there guffawing like two dumbfucks leaning on their shovels as I speared my bare fingers, no gloves required, through the dirt to help George dig out our cover for the night. At least I _thought _I was trying to be useful, but with two idiots practically in stitches behind me, I couldn't be sure.

"What's so funny, boys?" Shifty's thick Southern accent wafted in through the peals of laughter.

"What, are you blind?" Lieb managed to wheeze out in between snickers.

"I guess so cause I…well, I just don't catch your drift, Joe," Shifty replied, all doleful and sheepish as a little boy getting caught with his hand in a cookie jar.

"The midget is digging a foxhole with one bare fucking hand," the Jew replied, calming a little as the hilarity of it began to grow old and soften, dying. He and George sniffed and coughed and wiped little imaginary tears away from the mud-flecked corners of their eyes with filthy hands.

"What's so goddamn funny?" Muck had wandered over to see what all the fuss was about.

Fuck, was every man in Easy going to come over here and ask what the fuck was going on? No sooner did the thought occur to me did I suddenly feel bad and stop in the middle of digging the small, rather pathetic hole I'd managed to make with my own good hand. These boys were my brothers in arms. My comrades. They didn't deserve nothing like that…not even in my head, where things were unhindered by the reactions of the outside world and free to roam like wild animals. In there, it was anarchy, feral, nothing but riotous thought going in and out of focus.

Lieb's eyes flashed. The mirth was polluted with the dark, sinister apparition of anger as he looked up at Skip almost menacingly. The boy's ability to switch personalities on a dime was fucking _unnerving_. "Jesus, do I _gotta _repeat myself? I ain't a fucking broken record, you know…"

"Well excuse me, Joe, didn't know this here was a private party."

"No beer, no entry," George piped up jokingly from behind me.

"You're a riot, George Luz," Muck's eyebrows danced suggestively as he sent an approving gesture George's way. "Really. You're one hell of a guy. Too bad I left my ale back in Aldbourne."

"I'd sell my dick for a pint," Lieb mentioned ruefully.

"What, and deprive those big-breasted women of your dreams of a good imaginary fuck?" George asked.

"You're just asking for an ass-whipping. You're this close, Luz," Lieb demonstrated just how close he was with his thumb and forefinger, squinting at the tiny space left between them just to emphasize just how close to death the boy really was. Hell, that was pretty close. I sure as hell would shut my trap after seeing that murderous look in the man's eyes.

"Hey, you honestly think that if you stick your ass out in the open like that with those comments you make, I'm going to pass up the opportunity to give it a good kick?"

This was what everyone was talking about. Those sort of wisecracks he made that were just cruising for a bruising. Lieb was no patient man, either. He'd roughen George up a little if that was what it took to get the irritant off his back.

But this was George Luz. If he had an Indian moniker, it would be Man Who Moons Death (and thinks he can get away with it unscathed).

In other words, there was no such thing as irritating a man so much that he'd kill you over it in his sheltered little world.

I had to save him before Liebgott decided it was high time to send a friend straight to hell over a wounded ego and a poorly considered choice of words. Not that he would kill George, but perhaps a good ass-whipping to set the boy's attitude problem straight. Mess up his adorable face a little…I wouldn't put it past him.

Save the Luz and save the world.

"Are we gonna dig this foxhole or are we gonna have to sleep in the trees like fucking monkeys, George?"

For once, there was silence from the Luz. I must have missed the end of the world cause there was no way in hell George would pass up such a golden prospect with the monkeys in trees remark. Especially _fucking _monkeys in trees. It was comic gold just waiting to be used properly by a man who knew his way around a good joke.

He worked in silence for a while and I took to evening out the edges to make myself helpful in a situation that, otherwise, made me about as useful as a one-legged cowpony. Men wandered by every now and then, lost to the world, with guns poised in front of them for fire. The fuck if I did any wandering around here, at least not intentionally. If I had my druthers, I'd be shooting off like a stallion in a pasture full of mares in heat in the opposite direction of all the guns and screaming and blood, but I couldn't. So I had to settle for running for the nearest safe place. The hedgerow was to be our haven for the night while we waited for the next barrage from our German friends across the empty field, the no man's land. A scanty little haven, but it was all we had.

"Would you stop throwing dirt in my face?" George's voice broke the silence. He didn't even sound angry. Hell, he didn't even sound vaguely annoyed.

"I'm trying to bury you alive," I snorted, returning to the task of digging my own dinky hole and making sure to get some on George while I did so. "Stay still, would you? It makes smothering you in worm shit so much easier."

"Do you two ever stop fucking bickering?" Lieb interjected crossly.

"Joe, I know you just can't take your eyes off my ass, I admit it's quite stunning," George threw a load of dirt over his shoulder as he spoke. "But having you watch me with a shovel in your hands while I'm bent over and sweating like a goddamn pig in July is just not my idea of a comfortable situation."

"You've got some nerve thinking that pathetic excuse for an ass is attractive in any way, Luz," Lieb replied. Unable to contain my laughter, I choked on a deep-throated snort.

"All right, ladies, we can gossip over cappuccinos later," Welsh's voice of reasonable authority chimed in as his light, airy step intruded in on our dysfunctional conversation. "Get those foxholes dug nice and deep."

I could almost see George's ears prick at the prospect. Welsh had just been _asking _for it. "Nice and deep? Really, sir?"

"Curb the dirty fucking thoughts, Luz, and get back to work before I go nice and deep in _your ass_," the Lieutenant replied, his back to us, as he walked on.

Having his ass threatened by both a shovel and a Lieutenant fully capable of wrestling him to the muddy ground apparently made George a little uncomfortable. He returned to helping me dig out the rest of our foxhole.

And he did it fucking _double time._

* * *

_I knew I was dreaming._

_I just couldn't escape._

_Something held me under. Fear was the first entity I considered, but then it occurred to me that I wasn't afraid. I wasn't even sick to my stomach, like I usually was in waking, when I came across so much blood. That was how I knew I was dreaming. I was covered in it, but I felt nothing. No fear, no sickness, not even the slick sensation of it dripping down my bare forearms, coating the crinkled folds of my rolled up sleeves that dipped into the crease of my elbow. _

_Sound seemed the only sense that reached me at first as I waded through the void of the dream. I could hear everything. The breathing night, the blinking stars, the struggling of the two figures before me, the epicenter of the vision to which I was slowly being pulled toward like a blind moth to a dark flame. Even the crickets in the bushes behind me, hiding from the monster, me, who was bent over the screaming Kraut that lay broken, bleeding, against the lip of a grassy hill. They were separate from our world, the crickets were. Nature. She didn't choose sides. I was just doing my job, serving my country, putting an end to the threat that threw totalitarian shadows over a once bright future of democracy; this was what I saw, but she only frowned and bowed her head as she beheld only the callus of humanity._

_Nature sure had a real one-dimensional way of looking at things for being the bigger picture and all._

_As I phased into the dream's interpretation of my body, my figure, my mind sorted out the proper feelings that matched up with the scene. I was no longer watching, a spectator's bird's-eye view, but was personally involved. The Kraut beneath me released an anguished scream and I realized, as nothing but the rage filled me up and brimmed over into his blank eyes, smearing them with the result, the fear, that I was killing him._

_I looked down at my hands; they were buried in his stomach, which was open, and his insides were spilling out into my lap. It was a wonder he could even make a sound, much less fill up my ears with the most inhuman cry for mercy I'd ever heard, even in the waking world. I tried to tell myself to stop as I reached further into the torn up body for the heart. Turn this bitch off, I muttered to no one. _

_Stop it, my mind was screaming into deaf ears. The body couldn't hear me. Stop it! Can't you see you're killing him?_

_Something soft slid against my fingertips; it yielded beneath their touch and, as I reached for it, I felt it beating beneath my palms. I had a good grip on it. My hands turned into fists; they uprooted the pulsating thing (the heart, my mind corrected) and tore through veins and brittle bones to remove it._

_It was everywhere. Its spray covered my face, my chest, and my arms weren't peach-colored flesh anymore. They were red. Blood red. My hands were portraits of gore, framed by the still-throbbing heart. Thud, thud, thud._

_The Kraut's incoherent babbling (nein, nein, nein! Was all I could make out amongst the stream of German that came of his pleas) turned into squeals of agony as he arched his back and released them. His voice gurgled as it was drowned in an upsurge of blood. Let him, a voice said. Let him drown. _

_Like a stuck pig skewered alive. I grinned at the malevolent thought._

"_Maxine…"_

_I turned to see George. His eyes were soft and lit by starlight. But he wasn't the soldier anymore…he was the boy back home, the carefree one that I knew now only in my dreams. He wore a plain white t-shirt and a baseball glove and, in his hand, a ball. He was tossing it up into the air, catching it as gravity pulled it back down._

_The ball disappeared on its way up. It never came back as it seemed to melt into thin air._

_George's hand was extended toward me now. His eyes were darkening. He looked afraid._

"_Maxine, you don't have to do this," he said._

"_I already have." I replied, horrified, at last, at what I'd done._

"W_e've gotta go, kiddo. You can still save me if we get out of here before they come."_

_I looked back at my victim. He was drained of blood. No color. Just a blue-white carcass that lay propped up against the slope of the hill with its dead, empty eyes staring at me. They seemed to ask me questions that I didn't know the answer to._

_How could you do it? _

_I don't know._

_Because I must._

_"Come on!" George's voice again. "Don't you get it? They'll kill me if they find us! We have to go now!"_

_One last glance at my victim. He wasn't going anywhere. Not anymore. "Where will we go?"_

_It was too late. The next time I looked back at George, he was lying dead on the ground, his blood staining the grass scarlet. His arm was stretched out, reaching for me in his last moments as his insides spilled out of his body, twisted and still wriggling like red worms. His eyes were cold and stained with the silence of a scream that was never meant to be heard. _

_He was dead._

_I hadn't even heard them come._

_George was dead._

_Fuck!_

The curse remained a whisper in my head. The quiet that had been hovering peacefully over our hedgerow haven was shattered with a breathless gasp as I shot up out of sleep, stiff and shaking and covered from head to toe in a glossy sheen of sweat. Lightning twisted the sky overhead into gruesome shapes and rain trickled into our foxhole. Maybe I wasn't sweating after all.

_Our _foxhole.

_George! _

Next to me, a figure was snoring lightly. That should have been the first clue that he wasn't dead, but in moments like these, after waking up from painfully realistic nightmares in which best friends were lying on the ground with their entrails falling out of open stomachs…I had to have more proof than a few lazy snores to restore sanity.

I groped for his stomach with trembling hands, every nerve ending in my cold fingertips terrified of that slick sensation of blood sliding against bare flesh. Fuck, why did it have to be so fucking dark?

I nearly jumped out of my skins as I realized, too late, that the snoring had stopped. It was as quiet as a graveyard in here and I hadn't even noticed in my rush to make sure that George wasn't bleeding out of some unnatural orifice or missing any vital body parts.

A sleepy voice found me in the dark like a tap on the shoulder. "What in the _fuck _are you doing?"

I froze. How in the hell did someone answer a question like that? Especially under such damning circumstances? Probing an area so close to the groin sure as fuck didn't look natural. It could be mistaken, even, for something else.

And of course it had to be. Because it was George and it just wouldn't do for him to think pure thoughts every once and a fucking while.

"If you're looking for my penis, it's a little further down," he deadpanned, but I could hear the quicksilver of a poorly masked laugh in his voice. He guided my hands downward, placing them on his zipper. "And would you look at that…it's happy to see you!"

Oh, _fuck. _I fell backwards from the crouching position I had been in, landing hard on my ass, as I realized that that strange hardness pressing against one unfortunate hand wasn't the kind of pelvic bone I had first thought it to be.

"Holy fuck!" I hissed, wiping my palm against the dirt, as if that would remove the memory of such an encounter from the bristled skin.

"A fuck is never holy, Max," he teased.

I slapped him in the arm, which only made him seem to laugh harder. "Would you put that _away_?"

"It _is _put away," he deadpanned, gesturing to his zipped-up fly. "It's in my pants. You don't get anymore 'put away' than that."

"Then fucking tell it to go back to sleep," I replied.

He threw back his head and laughed as quietly as he could under the circumstances. "Well, ain't this fucking _hi_larious. You expect me to _not_ get all hot and bothered when you're trying to get into my pants?"

"I wasn't trying to get into your pants, George."

"Then would you mind explaining what in the hell it was you were doing?" He asked. "Cause we're both a little confused here."

This was a tough one. Hmm. To tell or _not_ to tell George about a dream in which he dies a gruesome and terrible and excruciating death and risk being the one to deal the fatal blow to an already painfully fragile mind (it was a low risk, but one that should never be taken if it could be helped)? I never knew with George; he could suddenly sprout an inclination toward superstition like a spare hand and take it as premonition.

One just never knew around here. It was better to be safe than to be sorry about watching a good old friend start running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

"I'd rather not."

"Fine. Have your _female_ secrets," he brooded, shifting his position a little so that it would be a little less uncomfortable lying in a bed of sharp pebbles. Which, it just so happened, were poking up out of the loose dirt like teeth bared in the grinning mouth of hell itself. "I, on the other hand, am going back to sleep. Who knows when I'll get another chance?"

"Mind if I use you as a pillow, old buddy?" I requested through a long, jaw-cracking yawn. "I could use some shut-eye too."

"Sure, but don't say I didn't warn you." He replied.

"Warn me about-"

I had just begun to snuggle in for the night, into the vast, all-encompassing warmth of George's body pressed against mine, still in the midst of asking what would be a stupid question when it occurred to me what George was talking about.

"What in _the_ fuck, George?" I jumped backward and his grin was so enormous that I could see it, even in the dark. "Have you been rolling in pig shit?"

"No, this is all me you're smelling here, Max," he mumbled sleepily, his eyes drooping beneath heavy lids. "Perfume a la George."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't base a career on selling that shit as cologne," I said, waving a hand in front of my face. "Cause I sure as hell wouldn't wear it."

It was his turn to yawn. "You don't smell so great yourself, babe."

My heart stopped as a pair of footsteps receded from our little hole in the ground. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"What?" He shot back, oblivious to the too-close-for-comfort encounter.

"Don't call me babe with all these fucking guys sniffing around here! What happens if somebody passes by, going off to take a shit or a piss, fuck who knows what they're doing when they're up wandering in the middle of the night, and they happen to hear something like that coming out of your big fat fucking mouth?" I threw up my hands at the stupidity of men. Sometimes, it seemed as if life might have been just a little easier without them. Then others…it was better not to imagine a world without men in some situations.

Like chopping logs for the fire when winters got too cold without the wood stove burning in the corner of the kitchen. Getting up in the middle of the night to check on the baby when it was wailing up a storm and the wife was just _so_ damn tired, exhaustion dripping into her feet and turning them to slabs of concrete, that she couldn't move. Whipping out the old shotgun for the ultimate ass-whooping on a few scoundrels sniffing outside the door.

Fighting a war to keep us women safe so that we wouldn't have to.

Not even thoughts of domestic bliss could cool my pumping blood. "It's shit like that, George, that'll get me found out."

"Max, you're babbling."

"Fuck if I'm babbling! You need to be more careful with what you say or you're gonna get me fucking shot and then I'll come back and haunt you to your _goddamn _grave."

He looked over at me. I couldn't see the movement, but I could feel his eyes taking in every last inch of my dark-obscured face. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. No, really, I'm okay," I sighed, closing my eyes and settling into the dips and crevices of George's arm. I felt the muscles contract beneath my cheek as he shifted a little closer to me. I sighed and closed my eyes, comfortable at last. Even with those damned sharp little pebbles trying to crawl up my ass. "I'm…I'm just tired is all. Need some rest."

We were both quiet for a moment, as the weariness began to drag us beneath dreamless sleep, where there was no pain, no rain seeping into our clothes, no threat of battle hanging overhead like a dead weight. Just…peace. Peace when none could be found in waking, when eyes slid back to breathe in the world and let reality bleed into the minds that hid like cowards in the dark behind them. Like venom. There was no escaping the poison of war…only in sleep was there any hope for relief.

"George?" I whispered into his arm, lips scraping his uniform.

"Hm?" He replied drowsily, voice sliding into my ears like an embrace. Soft and yielding and tempting as hell to return.

"If we ever make it back…" I said. "I'm _personally_ going to give you a goddamned bath."

He chuckled a little. Velvet laughter that tickled nostalgic heartstrings on its way into my head. The feel of it against resolve made raw by the tug and pull of battle sent a shockwave of deep, unreachable hurt through my chest; I clutched him a little tighter to me, wishing I could reach skin underneath all this fucking equipment, but finding material instead. I didn't care; as long as I could keep him safe from my dreams. My only fear now was losing him.

"I'll be looking forward to it, babe," he whispered back.

By now, I couldn't give a fuck if he called me Rita Hayworth. As long as it was his voice that reached me.

As long as it was him.

* * *

A/N: Well, I'm not very proud of this chapter at all. But I wanted to get through my writer's block and just post it so I could move on to the next chapter (which will be much longer, I already know, as I've already got it all planned out). I mean, it's been 3 days for goodness sakess! Grr. I hate writer's block. I'm sure it could've turned out better if I'd finished it the night I started writing it (the first half), but the second half (the dream sequence and everything after it) is the byproduct of effing writer's block. I'm going to go hairy-carrie on that guy if he don't leave me alone!

Ugh. Shoot me noowww.

I promise the next one will be better. Or...well...I hope it will be. And a little creative license will be taken in the next chapter, inspired by my chats with the ever-awesome Miluielwen ! Who, by the way, has a very awesome story out that will knock your socks off. She's just updated it this morning so there's a new update to read if you are already reading it. Yeah...writer's block is making me dull. Guh.

Well, until next time my pretties! Reviews are amazing! They might help my writer's block too, if you're feeling charitable and want to donate to a lost cause. Eh? Eh? No? Oh. Okay then.

Disclaimer - I looooooove the ever-lovely Rick Gomez and George Luz is one hell of an amazing paratrooper! Put them together and they make one hell of a lovely paratrooper! He belongs to Ambrose, Hanks, Spielberg and hey, whaddo you know? George Luz himself. Thanks for giving us you, George Luz! :D


	9. The Female Approach to Male Bonding

On account of inspiration from Miluielwen's (thanksss Em so much!) discovery of a picture of Rick Gomez lookin' all sexy in his hurt face, I've decided to incorporate a little realism into the story and include George Luz's earning of his purple heart that wasn't mentioned in the series. I'll post the pic on my profile. :) Really, though, when Rick Gomez ever _not _sexy as hell? Point taken, I see.

Anyway, don't worry. No George death here [just a whole lot of Max overreaction!]! Just a little hurtin' for certain. ;) Enjoyy!

* * *

My mind was reeling like a moving picture.

The worst fears of Maxine Devereux realized part two. Not Max Austen the soldier, the underdeveloped young man who tried his best to keep sane in a world gone mad, but the girl with no idea what she'd gotten herself into. The girl who'd follow her oldest friend straight into the mouth of hell without looking back, without thinking of where this path they were taking would lead them. These were her fears that were put on display, a stark contrast against the muted life of the soldier she'd been living (_not too much emotion, now, or they'll take you off the line_). They were all too real now, staring her in the face as the scene went up in flames and was torn down in bullets all around her.

I was there to watch her as she took the fall for all the decisions she's made these past few years.

Did there have to be a sequel to everything in this war? Couldn't fate just leave things be? I mean, they're perfect just the way they are now, as perfect as anything could get in the middle of a fucking field getting shot at by a few Germans that, in my opinion, needed a good ass-whipping to set their priorities straight.

Leave the switch at home; switches were for amateurs. If I got a chance, I was going to beat their brains out with a fucking two-by-four. If I ever got my hands on one of them, they'd wish they were never born. God save them if I found a piece of wood big enough to sate my bloodlust, because they might not make it through the third lashing.

The night before, in the wake of a nightmare that flooded sanity, ties had been forged. The kind of ties that turned stomach into knots and hands slick with nerves and minds into labyrinths in which all paths lead to one center. Just one. I feared blood because I feared seeing it trickling, unstoppable, inevitably, from George's torn body. I feared battle because it was the only place in the world where George wasn't invincible, when he was made vulnerable by the raining fire and the exploding trees and where everything was turned to dust. I feared darkness because I couldn't see him locked in its embrace. Silence because there was no proof he could speak at all, that his lungs still knew the motions of breathing, that his mouth was still as practiced in its ornery nature to spew insults and jokes and empty threats as ever.

All rivers run the same course. To the ocean.

George was my sea with the gentle voice, my white-crested horizon.

Every fear I'd ever had could be traced back to him now. Whatever grounds they had been based upon before were gone. Hollowed out like foxholes. George filled them up with his own purpose. If I lost him, I lost everything. There was no going home. I'd die here and that would be the end of it.

The moment he died was the moment all my hopes died with him.

It was why I was frozen now. Wrapped tight in some frail misconception of time that felt like it was cutting off my circulation. I wasn't breathing, heart barely beating, and the sky felt like it was spinning like a carnival ride overhead. My mind was so stuck in its own quagmire of stillborn wishes and dreams of home (they weren't lost, not as long as he was still blinking up at me through the shock and the pain) that it failed to remember that there was even such thing as time. What was a minute anyway? Was it a measurement of life or a countdown to death?

Everyone else seemed to know but me. That or they didn't fucking care.

It was lucky for George that Gene had been sitting with us when the first shell came barreling down through the trees. That he'd been cross-legged and quiet between George and me as we discussed some sort of candy stick that looked too fucking nasty to be considered a sweet at all and the probability of which one of us would be eating it first (him, because he'd eat anything if he was hungry enough, whereas I had some goddamn dignity to starve).

For having only been minutes since that moment passed, in which laughter and levity and camaraderie moved as easily as water between the mismatched trio, it seemed so far. Like it had happened yesterday. Or last week. Back in Rhode Island where things still made sense and time didn't feel like being drowned slowly in rivers of blood. Whenever the fuck it happened, it was long gone, buried in an early grave, and replaced with the bullet that had lodged itself in George's thigh.

Gene wasn't quiet anymore. There was no sitting between jests and smiling such a mild little grin as he acted like a medium between two very loud, persistent mouths. The second our side of the world lit up with the sounds and sights and tremors of battle, the transition left us staggering, but he thrived on it. He was no longer Gene at all, really, but Doc, our savior and carrier of sulfa and bandages and _God _that blessed morphine. And he was yelling at me. His mouth was forming the shapes of words and his expression of ferocity was blurred as the ground shook us so hard that I couldn't see properly. But I just couldn't hear him, couldn't see his face. He was too far away.

He reached out and yanked me over by my collar. Finally, his voice. The fury that burned in his deep, dark eyes. There it was and here he was, shouting orders at a blank face that didn't know whether to run or to hide or to stay and fight. George lay bleeding with his back propped up against the slope of the hedge, looking more stunned than pained at the moment, when it first happened; he'd never even seen it coming. None of us did. We'd barely heard Welsh's debriefing, listening in like children in big boy uniforms and guns that perhaps, just maybe, we were a little too immature to be handling. Fire and maneuver. Same shit, same game. Just a different day.

He was strangely calm, at least as calm as one could be in a situation in which they were bleeding out of a hole that, by rights, shouldn't have been there. But he was undoubtedly in pain. And it was a goddamned good thing that Gene was there or else he just might have bled to death and I wouldn't have known what to do.

Gene guided my hand to the open wound. _Put pressure on it. There you go. You keep doing that while I get the sulfa and a bandage, all right? Can you do that, Maximillian? Nod if you understand me!_

I nodded as something exploded behind me and Gene left and I was all alone again. A hand closed over mine, the one that was putting pressure on George's thigh and I realized, as I looked over at my old friend, that it was his hand. He was shaking and pale and somehow beautiful in the stitch of fear that echoed in every trembling inhalation. Every slow blink and strained swallow as he tried to fill up his crumbling resolve with some measure of composure.

All of the sudden I missed being articulate in a time where my inability to shut up might have proved actually fucking _useful_.

_Fuck, Gene, hurry up!_

"Do you know how to operate the radio?" The Cajun reappeared again at my side. I breathed in a cleansing sigh of relief and some of the poison of numbness was sucked out of the proverbial wound.

"No! You see, that's why we have a fucking _radio man_!" I replied, and pointed at George, who was now screaming in pain as my hand slipped and inadvertently, in its clumsiness, put a little too much pressure on the wound. _Sorry, buddy _was all I could manage. And I couldn't even manage to say it aloud.

"Well, there's no better time to learn than now!" George hissed through gritted teeth and gestured to his equipment, lying forgotten in the corner of the foxhole. "It should already be connected to CP! Just call for a fucking truck and get me the _fuck_ out of here before I put a bullet in _you_!"

"Death threats will get you nowhere, George!" I shouted back over an explosion close by.

My hand rested on his leg, trying to feed some comfort through the hole in it, if any such thing was possible. "You'll be all right, buddy! I _will _get you out of here even if it takes reading the fucking instruction manual on this thing!"

The poor excuse for console proved useless; Gene was good at calming people with words and hands of an angel, I was just the fucking _foot soldier_ with her life on her back and a bad mouth. "Well, fuck, don't bother! I'll be dead by the time you figure out then!"

I leaned into him, gaze locking with his. His eyes were dead and empty as a Raggedy Anne doll's, the only spark of anything remotely similar to animation being the flares of pain that burst through them like black shooting stars; the comparison to something so lifeless and quiet made my heart stop. "George, _I promise_."

He swallowed hard, staring up at me and the Cajun next to me as if we were a godsend. Gene finished up the bandage and murmured into my ear – _Let's get him out of here. Help me get him up._

The truck that George had been shoved into, the help of another medic being the only possible way this came to pass, drove away. The image of him, like a paper-thin figurine shedding words of empty assurance (_You keep safe, Max. Don't do anything stupid, all right? I'll see you real soon. Don't forget about me), _was engraved into the empty field before me.

It didn't matter where I turned, if I ducked into the tall grass and curled up into a little ball, if I closed my eyes and counted to ten until the world ended and I was left standing here like a monument to human existence, a lone figure on the edge of oblivion. He'd still be there in the void where earth and sky should have met when I opened them.

He was gone. Alive, thank fucking God, but no less _gone_. And I still couldn't escape the image of him bleeding. Crying out in pain when I could do nothing to help him. I wouldn't be able to, even if I could have shoved through the shock of watching someone, the boy I'd thought to be incapable of feeling pain or fear or hopelessness, struggle to hang on to his heroic image.

Because even conquerors could be conquered. Because even Rome could fall.

What felt like hours of standing there beside Gene in that brown field turned back into insignificant seconds as the epiphany slowly receded and allowed reality to take its place. The war still waged. The clock still ticked. And I was still here while the truck that carried my oldest buddy away from me was en route to some fucking aid station. I was still here, though. Surrounded by men whom I knew and loved, but somehow still alone.

Bloodstained fingertips snagged on my arm in the gentlest of ways. Gene. He shot off like a wayward rocket as another cry for medic rose like a flare into the gray morning sky.

I looked down at my own shaking hands.

They were covered in blood.

Nothing but apathy and trembling came of the horrible sight.

* * *

Days passed.

They moved on kind of like the dead. Didn't look back. Not because they didn't want to…but because they couldn't.

I kept to myself. Smoked and thought in solitude, sitting with the company of the trees who said nothing of my separation from the rest of the men. They didn't care. They stood over my head, sentinels of this forsaken land, and I'd lean into the designs of whorls and spirals like veins running through a mossy, fallen stump. Head tilted back to take in the sound of their branches rustling in the soft breeze. Smoke would rise from the end of my cigarette and that was all the proof I had that I was alive. That I could still smoke in an empty world, the soldiers behind me and the desolation of war before me. Life sure was fuckin' grand.

Hell, I even ate and slept in solitude. I dug my own foxholes, just big enough for my frame (so no one else could fit, maybe), and made them real shallow. It was as if only my subconscious mind knew I just wanted to get out of here any way I could and it wouldn't let me know this until I thought if over for a time or two. Lose a limb, lose a life. I didn't care anymore. I'd prefer death over the inconvenience of a missing arm or a leg. Mostly I just told myself I was too tired to care much about how deep it was, as long as I could fit in it and it satisfied the standards of Welsh or Lip or Buck as they pertained sufficient cover. Whoever was playing mother hen that day. Most of the time it was Lipton who came by and told me that my hole was too shallow, and most of the time I'd mumble a _yes, sarge _and he'd move on. I'd curl up into a little ball and try to find some sleep in a sea of murmurs and laughs and cigarette smoke.

If someone had asked me why, I probably wouldn't have told them. It was none of their business and really, a lot of them just wanted to be alone sometimes too. I was exercising my right to privacy.

But the truth was, without George, I was alone. He was the only one who knew my secrets and I was vulnerable without his protection. If I was found out, I was at their mercy. And George couldn't be there to save me if they did.

_That _was what scared the fucking hell out of me.

The moment George disappeared into that truck, the defense mechanism slid into place like a bolt lock on a door. I'd tensed at Gene's touch, a hand which always instilled comfort and in which I'd found solace before. A haven forged of skin and bone and tendon that bent to his every will to save. Now they were just appendages. Attached to a _man. _It was so jarring, that moment, to find that I feared someone that I'd always thought of as an angel. Too inhuman to be assigned any particular gender.

He hadn't noticed at first, but everything had been too chaotic. We'd gone our separate ways, with me racing back to cover and him rushing to play his role. The part that had been written for him before he was even born. I was just the destroyer, the killer, the soldier. But he was the angel, the healer, the guide back from the brink of death.

A lot of the guys took to sheltering the ones who looked like they were beginning to show the effects of death and fear. No one was cracking yet, it was too early in the game for breaks that ran too deep, but some of them were getting tired to the point where they'd stumble as we moved on, where they'd shake so hard during battle that they couldn't even fire their weapons. A few stopped eating whereas some couldn't sleep at all, not a wink, like poor Blithe.

Apparently they shuffled me into this category. Lieb would just sit with me for a little while in silence, even when I barked at him to go away. He never listened, but this time, even if I didn't want to admit it, his pig-headed nature worked to my advantage. Those few stolen moments in which he'd wordlessly offer a cigarette and a lighter lifted the latch on the door to my isolation. He'd wrestle his way in, in that typical stubborn approach, and chase away the dark for a little while. Just a little light. Just by sitting next to me and smoking a cigarette. He wouldn't admit it, but Liebgott cared about the boys. Every one of us.

Sometimes, Lipton would visit my insufficient foxhole. Now I could never have a cross word to say about Lipton, so when he'd come to check on me, on all the ones whose composures were beginning to crack in a certain light, I'd melt a little. He'd turn those soft eyes on me and put a hand on my shoulder, the kind a father would rest on his child. He'd ask me if I was okay. I'd nod, suck a little harder on my cigarette, and look away, the lure of his eyes on me, asking me to trust in him with everything I had, beginning to summon up all my secrets. I couldn't give myself away. Not yet. Lipton would inhale through his nose, determined to keep us sane, the lot of us, and then he'd tell me to come find him if I ever needed his help.

Little snippets of memories during those few days in which I detached myself from them mostly came to me in the dark. When I wasn't needed to shoot a Kraut or watch the line or walk what felt like hundreds of miles of distance in the pouring rain, I turned myself off. Just ran on autopilot until I was needed again. But I remembered them, even if they didn't know it.

Malarkey bringing me food and patting my hand, and I realized how lovely his eyes were when I recollected their focus on me. Buck coming by to check on first platoon while Lipton was asleep, and he'd pick up my jacket that I'd use as a pillow during the night; I wouldn't even move as he placed it over my shoulders and rest his strong, yet somehow gentle hand on the back, trying to give to me a small portion of his courage that he didn't need. During a watch with Hoobler and Muck, they'd whisper little jokes that had been lost in the lingering haze of autopilot mode, but later they'd come back, ships breaking through the fog to find the lighthouse. Waves to the shore.

They all cared about every single man in this company. We'd been together for two years, through Sobel and training and now this new hell that we were trying to become accustomed to. Nothing but death was going to tear us apart.

But it was Gene whose efforts were the most persistent. Every once and a while, when he wasn't bunking with Spina or tending to another broken soul, he'd nudge his way into my shallow foxhole and stay with me for as long as he could. Sometimes, it was just chocolate. But then there were nights where he would simply offer wordless comfort. A hand on my shoulder, much like the console Lipton and Buck gave, but it was changed somehow in Gene's translation. More ethereal and not quite human.

Tonight was one of those nights. I heard him coming, his cadenced footsteps stealing through the rows of foxholes like echoes lining the shadows of the trees. Dirt crunched beneath his boots and I could almost envision him checking each hole to make sure everyone in it was still breathing. They must have been because a moment later, I felt him behind me and he crouched at my ear.

"Maximillian?" He crooned, voice as painful in the silence as silk against a raw wound. It was beautiful in of itself, his voice, but hearing him unearth the truth I'd tried to bury in the past few days sent a shockwave of hurt through me – I was still battling the fear of discovery and the need for human confidence. So far fear was winning.

"I'm awake, Gene." I replied.

"You ah…" He cleared his throat. "You mind if I sit here with you for a while?"

"Yeah." I said, still staring straight ahead into the shapeless gloom. I could swear that shadows were flitting underneath its cover – Kraut shadows. Like they were planning to ambush us the second I stopped looking.

He took my vague answer as a yes and sat down beside me, burrowing as deep as he could into the shallow hole. I could hear him rustling quietly, his uneven breathing that soon tapered off into a steady pace once more, and he seemed just as content with silence as I was. Gene was one of those people that didn't need words to authenticate his place in the world. For him, it was actions, it was saving people. He would make one hell of a doctor someday if he ever considered the career. If he made it out of here alive, that is.

"Gene?"

I felt his eyes on me. "Hmm?"

"Why don't you ever just call me Max?"

"What's that you said?" He asked.

I knew he'd heard me. He was just trying to change the subject and it wasn't working with me. "Max is easier. It's one syllable instead of five. You don't say my full name for convenience. So why don't you just call me Max like everyone else does?"

"I don't know," he said. "It's my way, I suppose."

"Fuck, you see that, Gene?" I pointed into the forest. My head was spinning as all the blood drained out of my face; the finger that I was pointing with was shaking noticeably and nothing got past Gene's picture-perfect scrutiny. "You see that? I'd bet my fucking Lucky Strikes that there's a few Krauts in there."

He lowered my arm and folded it back in its place. "There ain't nothing in there. It's just your imagination."

"_Don't fucking do that._" I snapped my head toward him, my lips curling back over a snarl. "Don't undermine me just because you fucking feel sorry for me. I don't want you to feel sorry for me, Gene. I want you to take me fucking seriously and not call me by my full fucking name like I'm some kind of _stranger _to you."

He didn't say anything, just watched as the anger faded and all that was left behind in its wake was shame and something that felt like nakedness. Like I was turned inside out and he could see everything that I kept concealed from the world. I pulled my jacket a little tighter around me and reached for a smoke as the tremors started up. Fucking nervous system was useless anymore.

Using my hands for something more than just paperweights seemed to bring attention to them. He took the right wrist gently into his hands, the one that was still swathed in an old, tattered wrap tht hadn't been changed since Carentan, when I'd broken it just to quiet the rage monster that tried to climb the crumbling walls of my self-control. I'd succeeded in smothering the fit, but not without some pain to show for it. He'd been the one to wrap the goddamn thing.

It might have hurt if someone else had looked at it, inspected the fractured bone. But it didn't. Gene's hands didn't seem to know how to inflict pain.

He shook his head. "This ain't healin' right."

"Who the fuck cares anymore," I spat, taking it back from him. "I sure as hell don't."

He watched me closely, his eyes burying deep into my skin as if he were trying to extract the pain. All he could find was the origin...the cause of it. "He'll come back."

"Yeah?" I asked passively as I lit up a cigarette. "Who's coming back?"

"George," he said. "He'll be okay. I'd be willing to bet my best pair of scissors on his coming back in a few weeks."

"Oh no," I smirked, holding back a laugh as I still suspected those uneven spots in the forest before me to be Krauts. "Not your best pair! What will you do without your best pair?"

He smiled too. "I'd be a useless medic, that's what."

"Gene, you could never be a useless medic."

He didn't reply to this. And I didn't expect him to.

"You ever read?" I asked suddenly, blowing out a smoke ring.

The suspicions were beginning to grow less urgent as time with Gene wore on. His presence was calming and enlivening all at the same time, two emotions that didn't seem like they could fit, but he made the pieces slide together without having to resort to force. He was sort of like a first breath infused with nicotine. That was the closest I could get to defining our Cajun medic.

He looked at me, his brow furrowed. "I have."

"Patience, my dear Cajun. Patience. I'm getting to _why _in the hell I'd ask such a stupid fucking question in a second, all right?" I replied, and he lowered his head as he chuckled a little. "I was just…I was thinking. Dangerous practice for a bullet jockey, I know, but I like to live life on the edge a little. Wanna know what it was I was thinking about?"

"What were you thinking about, Maximillian?"

I paused to exhale a smoke-soaked breath and then continued on. "Back when I was in school…my father, you see, he was a bit of a self-proclaimed scholar. He liked to read and such, something I never cared much for because it took time away from my hell-raising habits. But once, before graduation, he sat me down at the breakfast table while ma was outside hanging up the fresh linen. He never said much, but…he put this poem in front of me before he left for work that mornin'. I never forgot it since," I halted as I stuck the smoke in the corner of my mouth and remembered my manners. With the Cajun around, who without saying anything (just acting the way he did) reminded me of my own underused knowledge of etiquette, I could never forget them, even if I tried. I started rifling through my pockets for the pack of Lucky Strikes that I'd put away. "You read much poetry?"

"I reckon I've read a few," he drawled in reply. I offered him a cigarette; he took it with a small thank you and I lit up the opposite end as he gathered it into his pursed lips. His eyes were like glass caught within the pale halo of radiance that issued from the lighter.

"It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul," I recited.

"Ernest William Henley," he replied. "Invictus."

"Figures you'd know. You're the only man I know who has actually read something other than the symbol on a bathroom door," I said, and then recalled another qualifying member of this rather small, ambitious group. "Well, 'sides Webster that is."

"Poetry has this way of saying things that I can't," he said. "Puts words to my thoughts and all."

"I always took you for a closet poet."

His lips twisted over his cigarette in a bashful little crooked smile. "I'm no more a poet than you are."

We were quiet for a moment as we both assessed the depths of the lyrics. Waded through their somber words and realized that they felt familiar. Familiar as the death and blood and war that surrounded us.

He stayed with me long into the night. Long after those silhouettes that haunted me in the forest disappeared into the backwoods of my imagination.

* * *

I could still feel his leg pressed against mine.

That and a raspy voice, caught in the snare of sleep as it came my way, that belonged to some fucking Jew I remembered from somewhere. Not a Jewish whore, no. There were so few of those; they really were a dying breed (a shame as the one I knew had so much libido to spare). Although, I'm sure he would gladly pull his pants down and share his wealth with anyone who would spare him anything that even closely resembled a suggestive look (an old woman with a lazy eye, perhaps, and he was tearing his pants off faster than she could lift her purse to smack him for sexual harassment), much less a penny. If it had breasts and a hole to insert his joy stick, he was one happy boy.

Yeah, that had been good old Lieb next to me.

Happier in his dreams than a sissy in a prick tree, even.

Whatever the fuck that meant. It was one of them down-south-with-a- drawl sayings, the kind that followed the trail of Southern familiarity like moonshine and spitting tobacco and front-porch swings next to a sultry Louisiana sunset. I remembered this particularly classy cocktail-party-ready adage from a time that George was making fun of a Kentucky newcomer with uneven pigtails and coke-bottle glasses that sat in the back of our fourth year class and spouted off her native tongue at the most inconvenient intervals possible. We were both confused about her and what primordial hole in the ground she'd crawled out of.

George had cultivated a theory that the Southern culture was at risk of extinction and she was making sure it was not lost to the ages by annoying the fuck out of us with her customs during arithmetic. I, however, was more logical when it came to such things and swore she was just a spastic hick with too much brain activity and not enough time in a day to run it all off. George, when it came to making the ultimate choice between logic and humor, just chucked all rationality off to the side and went for something that sounded much more bombastic, but made much less sense.

Kids were just so damned nice.

The thought of George made my stomach twist. Not sickly, like the memory of personally meeting the inside of his body was coming back all of the sudden. More like that feeling when you have a wart removed – goddamn if it wasn't annoying as hell, but you kind of missed it when it was gone because it sort of defined you. In its own twisted, deformed little way.

Old habit was the tired, cranky geezer sitting on my shoulder, and he had the right mind (and the right proverbial shotgun, too) to tell him to stop fucking jabbering in my ear so I could get some sleep, but I realized I wasn't tired. The underlying understanding, however, the one that hurt worse than lack of sleep and that I was hoping to avoid, was that he _wasn't_ sitting there next to me, being as infuriating as was humanly possible for a man his size. For a man any size, really.

Old habit geezer on my shoulder grumbled and crawled back into his afternoon nap.

My hands grew restless and I wrung them over and over, trying to squeeze out the loneliness that was making my body feel heavy and my head fucking swim until my knuckles waxed white from all the pressure. Distraction. It was a beautiful thing and whoever had invented it up there, the guy with all the power, I would kiss his feet, tongue and all, if I ever had the chance to meet him.

I reverted back to earlier. When voices still purged the silence that hovered, tousled and finally broken as laughter emerged from beneath the earth, over our heads.

Lieb and I had talked for a little while, after he'd been torn out of the dream by the beginning of a nightmare, while Martin and Hoobler snored near us. Four men to a foxhole. In this case, three men and a very gender-confused woman who hoped she wouldn't get a nice elbow in the breast in the middle of the night.

At least I couldn't complain about being cold. Not with so much male body heat present.

He'd sighed, one of those frustrated kind that gusted out of flared nostrils. I'd looked over at him.

"_Max?" _

"_Hmm?"_

"_You all right?"_

"_Finer than fucking frog hair."_

"_Max, come on. It doesn't fucking matter how long you sit here and mope, George isn't going to pop up out of the ground."_

"_Well, that would make sense, I mean….he sure doesn't smell like a fucking bed of roses."_

"_Ain't that the fuckin' truth. Well, since you ain't getting any sleep either, how about we go sit with the guys for a while, huh?"_

"_The guys."_

"_Those people you've dodged death and Sobel with for the past two years? Yeah, those guys. The very same."_

"_Fuck! That's who they were? And here I was, the complete dumbfuck, thinking he was traveling with the Normandy circus freaks…"_

"_Yeah, you're real cute, Max. You're gonna look even cuter with my fist up your ass."_

"_You know, you have a real ass fixation, Lieb."_

"_Stop jerking me around. Are you coming over or not?"_

"_No. No I think I'll just stay here."_

"_Are you sure you'll be okay?"_

"_It's too late to change your image, Lieb. I'm afraid you're stuck as the hot-headed, hair-trigger tempered Jew for life after that little scuffle with Guarnere."_

"_I'm bein' serious, kid."_

"_I'll be fine…and Joe?"_

"_Yeah?"_

"…_Be careful, all right?"_

I'd wanted to tell him. Just to have another confidant. To have someone else who knew. After that night with Gene, after smokes and reciting Henley, I realized that I was the enemy that I was fighting off in the battle to keep my secret. Not the boys, not Gene, not anyone. No one but myself.

That was the last night I separated myself from them. The next evening, when we settled in for the night and huddled around Domingus for dinner (canned food heated up in a pan that hadn't seen soap or a fucking sponge in weeks, my fucking favorite), I went up to Lieb, Muck, Penkala, Malarkey and Bull. I was welcomed in with a clap on the shoulder from Bull and Lieb and a smile from everyone. They were all happy to see that I wasn't as cracked as I had been, at least like they'd first thought. Or else I'd just glued myself back together.

I'd even gotten to the point, as the days since George left had slowly escaped me and turned into a week, that I began to trust them again. Especially Gene, which was natural considering his dependent nature, and Liebgott, the latter of which I couldn't really understand. He was the one I should've trusted the least, being the one with changeable temperament and the ability to beat a fucking giant into submission.

And yet, my female tendencies lead me to believe in him; I put almost all of my trust in him. Only one portion of that trust remained behind and I was seriously considering changing the state of things.

But I couldn't do it. The words were there, balancing on the tip of my tongue, but they fell backwards into my throat and I choked on them at the last minute. I couldn't. Not yet. It was too soon.

He'd left after that, ignorant of how close he really was to having his world completely turned upside down. It wasn't right, putting that kind of shit on Lieb's shoulders. On anyone's really. It was cruel enough that I'd burdened George with such secrets. I'd have to hold on a little longer. No one needed that kind of shit on their plate. They already had enough being shoveled into their dinner tins.

He left me with at least the comfort of a good-humored snort from him; he'd been smiling, for once, instead of the usual scowl that seemed to make the years stack up around his young, bright eyes.

That was an hour ago. Time sure did lag around here.

I looked over at Martin and Hoobler. Both were quiet, save for a few sleepy murmurs here and there, but mostly they were as dead to the world as a couple of corpses hanging out in half-finished graves. It was late and I couldn't sleep, and I figured if I couldn't, well they shouldn't either; I kicked the Sarge's boot. He gave a drowsy grunt, but no more came of it. Fucking figured.

"Hoob," I hissed.

No answer.

"Hoobler!"

Again, nothing but snores.

"Donald Hoobler!" I cupped my mouth, whispering through the hand-made tunnel. "Please report to consciousness immediately before I _whoop_ your ass!"

And for my efforts, I received a big fat wad of…nothing. The boy was lucky he was adorable as a red-cheeked elf or else I'd be pissed as hell at him right now.

Well damn all hell to a basket of blueberries. If hell could fit in a basket. My mind wandered over the possibility of finding berries in a forest this fucking empty, maybe in a thicket nearby, as I crawled half-way out of the foxhole and perched my chin on the ledge. Liebgott was nowhere to be found, not since he abandoned me to these two sleeping bags of bones, but there were poorly disguised snickers coming from one of the holes nearby. I decided, since sleep wasn't coming any time soon, to investigate. If only I had a Sherlock Holmes cap to complete the _what-the-fuck?_ moment.

I crept through the rows. A few _huh's _and _what the fuck is he doing?'s _followed my elusive footsteps, but everyone was too tired and was already too invested in what little comfort could be found in a hole in the earth to bother with my stupidity, so no one got out to lash me verbally for wandering around. In the dark. With no gun, no helmet and no fucking clue, apparently. I guess they supposed that if I was stupid enough to make myself a sniper target, then I was stupid enough to die for it.

Them boys had some sound logic. I was lucky to have them all next to me if we happened to find ourselves in the middle of another fucking German onslaught. If it came to that. Which it probably would.

I exhaled slowly as I lowered to a crouching position beside my destination – the hole from which Liebgott's smooth voice was emanating, just skirting the borders of the forest clearing to our left. I was dangerously treading the possibility of an encounter with death, if it happened to wake up from its catnap and swarm these here parts in the form of Krauts with big guns and murderous intentions.

They all quieted for a second or two.

Perhaps they thought I was someone _important_.

"What're you boys up to?" I asked. I heard one of them sigh, as if with relief that they weren't being picked for a patrol or guard dog duty.

"Oh, _shit_," Muck replied. God, it was such a relief to hear his voice added into the anonymous mix. I hadn't seen him all day and, after our minor skirmish with a few trigger-happy Kraut patrols, I'd convinced myself I'd lost someone else whom I'd come to depend on. "It's just you Max."

I raised my hand to tip my helmet at him, but remembered I'd left it back in my foxhole. "Glad to hear you too, Skip. So, what's going on in here?"

"Shootin' the breeze," Malarkey said. Another one safe, thank _fucking_ _God._

I waved my hand in front of my face. "I thought I smelled something fuckin' rancid coming from over here."

"Jesus, he means _talking_," Lieb's unmistakable voice came, as quick to signal that hair-trigger temper as its owner was. "You know, civilized conversation? I wouldn't expect a savage to know what the fuck that sounds like."

"I didn't know you guys knew what civilized conversation was either," I replied, jumping into an empty slot where my bite-sized ass could fit. "So I guess we're all in the same fuckin' hole, then."

"How you holdin' up there, Max?" Lieb asked, apparently ignoring my wise-ass retort.

"The usual," I replied, situating myself a little more comfortably into the indentation of the ass that had sat here before me. Apparently it had been rather nonexistent, or indented, because it fit in the mold of mine perfectly. "Can't sleep, smell like shit and I haven't been able to think about anything else but them Krauts sitting over there just itching to knife us in our sleep."

"That sure keeps me up at night," Penkala commented.

"Yeah, no shit," I said with a snort. "I can't believe the Sarge can sleep under such fuckin' conditions. Like a fuckin' baby in his little hole in the dirt. And Hoob? Well, fuck. He's out like a light too."

"Hoob could sleep through the last fuckin' judgment," Muck chuckled a little, probably entertaining the image of such an occurrence. "I'm not surprised that he's snoring away. And here I am…stuck with you assholes. Listening to Lieb's bad jokes."

The Jew protested this affront on his sense of humor. "_Fuck_ you Muck."

Well, obviously _he _thought he was funny.

Malarkey chimed in with a wistful sort of sigh. "I sure do miss old Luz's Saturday night comedy."

"How do you know it's Saturday?" Muck asked.

"I'm taking a wild guess," the former replied. "It's anyone's, really, out here. I can't remember what a fucking calendar looks like, much less what day of the week it is."

Liebgott decided his opinion would only _better _the gloomy conversation. "Time's a little fucked up out here. _Everything _is," he said. "I mean, what do you guys wanna bet that Luz is sitting in some cot somewhere in England with a blond nurse hanging her big fat titties over him while she gives him a sponge bath?"

I scoffed, the furrowed brow I cast toward him lost in the dark. "Lieb, that's _your _fantasy."

"Exactly," he cried and I could feel the air shift irritably, rustling and snapping like linens in an afternoon breeze, as his hands went up in frustration. "Fucking son of a bitch gets to have it all while I sit here with his half-bit midget in a fucking hole in the earth. _Starved_ of female company."

If only you knew, Liebgott. If only you knew. I shook my head as I thought of the irony of the situation, of how close he was to being completely _satiated_ with female company courtesy of yours truly. Of him being closer to the female race than he knew he was and probably a lot closer than George himself.

The reality was that George probably had it worse than Lieb thought he did. That he had some medic hanging over his leg as he rested in some makeshift cot that had been fashioned out of whatever materials the companies that supplied them could afford (sheets of the same materials that abandoned chutes with hole burnt into them were made of, fallen trees that had seen too much flak since D-Day and had been shipped to cot factories, a few nails from shot down planes left in the field to burn that were used to build the aid stations themselves). I could see it now. George's face torn into twisted shapes, like pain, with the medic's hand buried wrist-high in the wound because he didn't have any tweezers.

The fact was he probably did have tweezers, but my brain was so fucking out of sorts with having him so far away that it was conjuring the most gruesome image it could think of just to make me feel worse. Because I couldn't be there and this was my punishment. Imagining him in the worst kind of pain.

George was probably screaming in agony, waking up the entire aid station and _beyond_. Who the fuck knew how much morphine they had in him, but he'd be screaming anyway. Because those goddamned medics were about as gentle as a kick in the balls (I didn't even know what that felt like, but I'd heard it from a few good sources that it was no Sunday picnic). Especially the ones off the line. They were taken off because they were starting to lose it. Or because they were the best at being quick and nimble under the worst situation.

That didn't exactly entail gentleness.

And here Liebgott was wishing he was him. That he would exchange places with George if he had the chance to. I had a mind to tell him to be grateful for what he had, which was being unscathed and sitting here with no fucking holes in his leg or belly or, much worse, his head. The fact was I cared about this stupid fucking hot-headed Jew and to hear him wish he was somewhere else, bleeding and screaming and broken, made me want to slap him upside the head and bury my face in his chest, hugging him to me and not fucking _daring_ to let go, all at the same time.

I refrained. I was too tired to deal with the resulting temper that would put hurricanes to shame.

"I sure do miss that boy." I admitted to the group.

A lighter flickered nearby. A cigarette…oh, I sure as hell needed one of those like I needed a hole in my head. But it sounded so nice right now. So _nice. _

I reached into my breast pocket anyway for my pack, despite the fact that I was getting real low on my supplies and needed to cut back. Fuck rationing. I needed some nicotine.

"He'll be back," Muck promised. "If I know George, then I know he'll have his wise old ass back here within the next few weeks. Whether we want it around or not."

"Anyone got a lighter?" I asked.

Malarkey leaned over and lit up my smoke. "Thanks, 'Lark."

"Don't you mention it, boy," he replied teasingly.

I scooted a little closer to Lieb as I settled deeper into the hole and sucked on my smoke. God, this was the closest to comfortable as we could get. I'd take what little I could scrounge. And try not to complain _too_ much.

"'Ey," Lieb snapped, his voice rising up like a specter in the impenetrable dark. "I don't fucking think so, midget. There will be no _fucking_ cuddling in here."

I shot him a glare, ignoring the reality that he couldn't see a goddamn thing in here, much less my expression of annoyance. I decided verbal reinforcement was needed. "You can go _fuck_ yourself, Joe."

It was hard to gauge his reaction in this hollow ditch, this little dirt-encrusted slice of hell, but as soon as I heard him laugh, I started to laugh too. We all did – Muck, Malarkey, Penkala, Lieb and I. They were snickers, really, nothing like the kind of unhinged, unhindered laughter that rose up out of our barracks back in Toccoa and Mackall. Hell, even Aldbourne had its fair share of housing a few riotous fits of mirth, especially with George around, before he'd started getting grouchy as hell about the jump. I tried not to think of those days; they were dead. What was alive now was all I had left. Today was still breathing - it was all the life I was offered to make the most of.

It occurred to me that everyone was just a little bit quieter tonight, less belligerent. These men were a little more sedate compared to the rowdy boys back in Toccoa. A little less innocent somehow.

And as I twirled my glowing cigarette between restless fingers, staring into the dark, searching for outlines of the men I was with…

I realized I was too.

* * *

A/N: Ah, this turned out a little better than my last one. And now that it is 2:30 in the morning, approximately a few hours before I have to get up and go to school, I must big all of you adieu! Not a doo...that's just fucking gross. ;D

Not much George in this chapter. Don't expect him at all, really, in the next. I'm working on establishing thicker ties with the rest of the boys because, let's face it, she's so attached to George all the time that Max hasn't really let herself trust in the rest of Easy. Next chapter should include Guarnere. Yayy! I was going to include him in this one, but I went with Buck instead (yumm). Anyway, I gotta go to bed.

Revieeeeeewwwws are chocolate for the soulll! Kay thanks bye!

And Miluielwen's awesomeness knows no bounds. She's helped me out so much with this story! Haha sooo many mistakes I've made that she's caught...some stupid ones too. xD Anyway, you should go check out her story, Femme De L'Ombres! It's really really good and her OC, Eleanor, just continually blows me away with her sophisticated elegance and ass-kicking abilities! So go take a look! I won't spoil it's amazingness for you; you'll have to go check it out for yourself. ;)

Disclaimer - No ownage of Rick Gomez or George Luz here. Just sad lack of ownership of Fuzzy Luz or Rick Gomez fangirlness. He belongs to Ambrose, Hanks, Spielberg and George Luz himself.

(also, the snippets of poetry belong to William Earnest Henley. They come from his poem called _Invictus.)_


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